


Liar, Liar

by superfluouskeys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Bickering, Canon-Compliant to a point, F/F, F/M, Implied Relationships, Jealousy, Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Minor Fenris/Female Hawke, Minor Varric Tethras/Bianca Davri, Red-Purple Hawke, Rivalmance, Rivalry, everyone is horrible to each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11920035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Varric had not waltzed into Hawke's life as the great protector he liked to imagine himself.  Indeed, she had crashed into his with what seemed a visceral hatred he could not quite bring himself to return in kind.





	1. Filthy

**Author's Note:**

> Just a casual attempt at a reasonably canon-compliant Varric/Hawke rivalmance that gradually took over my life. 
> 
> This was kind of a personal challenge in a lot of ways, so I think it's probably pretty removed from a lot of the stuff I've written, but I'm also strangely proud of it? Nothing outlandish happens; essentially I just made a conscious effort not to...pull as many punches as I usually do, in terms of sex, violence, and general harsh decision-making.
> 
> I'm not sure how long it will end up being--currently planning on two or three more chapters of comparable length.

**_I'm not calling you a liar  
                                _ ** _...just don't lie to me._

It wasn't every day one encountered an eligible dwarven lady in Kirkwall, and this one was fresh out of Orzammar, still with that wide-eyed look and the fear of falling into the open sky.  Varric was having quite an easy time of charming her until a most unwelcome third party had elected to open her fat mouth.

A hand, long-fingered and distinctly human, slammed down upon the table between them.  Varric followed the path of the bare, muscled arm to the human who wielded it, a shock of black hair against pale skin, a shock of blue eyes against the corporeal world, a smug smile that immediately set him on edge.

"Would the esteemed gentleman be so kind as to conduct his sordid business elsewhere?" the human asked him, in a voice so crisp and so clear it almost hurt, somewhere behind his eyes.

Varric raised an eyebrow in response.  "I...beg your pardon?" he managed, but she turned her attention to his companion, danger flashing in her eyes.

"Terribly sorry to interfere, but I only felt you should know about the Master Tethras's lovely wife and children, whom he has left woefully unattended to this evening in hopes of gaining your favour."

Wide-eyed, falling up into the open sky.  The dwarven woman's eyes were a lovely, decidedly earthly hazel.  "Is this true?"

"No!" Varric waved his hands wildly, glared up at the human.  "I've never seen this human before in my life!  How do you even know my name?"

Mock-hurt, smug smile hidden but not quite gone.  "Why, Varric, what a desperate pretense you've adopted, and here am I, only trying to help you."  She held aloft a small stack of scrapped letters, ones he would recognize anywhere, all positively crawling with highly personal information.  "Whatever would Bianca think if she could see you now?"

Now it was Varric's turn to slam his hands on the table.  He stood, enraged, and of course she was a human, and a lanky one at that, so standing did little to shift the balance between them.  Varric was left with nothing but a gnawing, vulnerable kind of anger that settled heavy in his stomach and made his knees shake.

The human tutted and shook her head, and the dwarven lady stood, too, and spoke some meaningless admonition before she took her leave, and Varric was left alone with a madwoman.

"All right," he sneered.  "You've got my attention, human."

Her otherworldly blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly.  "What an honour."

He moved, lightning fast, in an attempt to snatch the discarded letters from her hands, but she was too quick for him, and held them aloft, out of his reach.  Varric felt his lips curl upward in a travesty of a smirk.  "If you were going to blackmail me, couldn't you have at least let me get laid first?"

The human inclined her head in mock-sympathy.  "Aww, poor thing.  What's it been, a few days?"

"Is that supposed to be an insult?"

"Sex isn't a difficult thing for a filthy liar to come by, Master Tethras," the human replied.  "If you think charming wide-eyed fools out of their breeches is something to be proud of, then I haven't misjudged you at all."

Varric wrinkled his nose.  "Was there something you wanted, milady?"

The human pointed a finger at his face.  "You," she said, just slowly enough to send a fresh wave of irritation coursing through his veins, "are Bartrand's brother."

He'd been so overwhelmed by her piercing eyes and obnoxious presence that he hadn't noticed other obvious things about her: Fereldan accent, unkempt hair, dirty, roughed-up hands, old clothes, but not without some protective qualities.  A refugee.  Hadn't so much as flinched in response to a show of aggression.  Probably mixed up in some shit business.  Mercs, maybe, or smugglers.  Looking for a way up in the world.  "The Deep Roads expedition," Varric sighed at last.

The human tapped his nose before he could move to swat her hand away.  Twice now that she'd been too quick for him, and he hated her all the more for it.

"So what?" he threw up his hands in exasperation.  "I help you or you keep rooting through my trash?  And slamming your grimy human hands into the middle of perfectly pleasant evenings?"

The human...advanced on him, somehow, but without really moving.  She shifted her weight, squared her shoulders, lowered the tilt of her head, and the smile she offered him then was nothing short of terrifying.  "You don't know me very well, Varric," she said, and the saccharine tone of her voice gave him actual chills.  "But you could.  And I assure you, the people who know me find me positively exhausting.  You see, there are a great many things that I do very well.  But I've never been especially good at giving up."

Varric dragged a hand across his face as he contemplated his options.  Court what could well be a lifetime of these kinds of nerve-wracking, exhausting conversations with someone who obviously had nothing to lose, risk calling in a few favours to have her shut up, or send her off into the Deep Roads, where the odds were good she could get bitten by a tainted rat and never return to the surface to bother him again?

"What Bartrand needs," he said at last, "is a partner.  I assume you have skills beyond extortion.  Flash Bartrand some coin and the usefulness of whatever it is you do to make ends meet, and..." he sighed again.   "If it'll get you off my ass, I'll put in a good word for you."

The human's eyes narrowed again.  "Do I look like I've got coin to spare, Master Tethras?"

"Maker's _balls_ , human, what more do you want from me?"

"You're correct in assuming my formidable wit and charm are far from my only assets," the human replied through bared teeth.  "Alas, my network is decidedly limited by my status.  You, on the other hand..."

"Human," Varric cut her off.  "If it will end this conversation, I will pass a few gigs your way."

The smug grin returned.  "Oh, Varric, darling, I knew you'd come through."

"Yeah, sure, whatever."  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pretty dwarf exiting the tavern.  Damn.  He returned his attention to the psychotic human.  "To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

She thrust out her hand.  "Hawke."

Varric contemplated her hand with raised eyebrows.  "Is that some kind of nickname?"

"A surname, if you must know."

"And your first name?" Varric inclined his head skeptically.

A vicious smile, "Is on a need-to-know basis."

_If it'll end this conversation_ , he reminded himself, and took her proffered hand.  "Pleasure doing business with you, Hawke."

* * *

As it turned out, Hawke was more competent than she was obnoxious, and that was saying something—not that Varric would ever admit that to her.  Still, he ended up passing along far more and better leads to her than he had ever intended, and the one he'd gotten wind of today was such a doozy he had to wait for the perfect moment to spring it.

Fortune was on his side.  He spotted Hawke in the corner of the Hanged Man (not the only tavern in Kirkwall, but the only one that didn't ask too many questions), engrossed in conversation with a wide-eyed young Dalish elf, of all things.

Varric had to be quick: she was a warrior with the second sense of a mage and the reflexes of a rogue.  He relied on the way she seemed to captivate the girl's attention, stayed out of her periphery entirely and kept his eyes trained elsewhere until he was ready to strike.

He slammed his hand onto the table between them, just for good measure.  "Shame on you, Hawke," he said lightly.

She looked up at him, expectant.  Something in her eyes said _I dare you_.

He leaned in.  "Trying to seduce a second young lady in the span of a day?  Haven't you had quite enough?"

"What can I say, Varric?" she replied smoothly.  "I am seldom satisfied."

"Oh!"  The elf's wide eyes grew somehow wider, and she scrambled to her feet, muttering something about "I should go" and "I'll...see you later.  Maybe.  Possibly.  I'll just..."

Hawke watched her go, almost but not quite impassive.

"Well, well, well," said Varric.  "The haughty mercenary isn't so immune to the pleasures of the flesh, after all."

He'd rattled her calm, he could see it, just barely, but she hadn't stopped smiling yet.  "Did you need something, Varric, darling?" she wondered crisply.  "Or were you merely overcome by vicious jealousy?"

Varric's face twisted.  "Hardly," he spat, but struggled to regain his composure.  "I just came across some information I thought might interest you.  But if you'd rather while the night away with wide-eyed fools..."

Hawke laughed, a high, mirthless sound.  "Unlike you, Master Tethras, my priorities are quite in order."

"Oh, really?" Varric narrowed his eyes, leaned on his hands.  "And what would those be?  Harass innocent dwarves, slaughter for coin, drink yourself into a stupour, rinse and repeat?"

Hawke turned the full force of her sharp blue eyes upon him.  "I do beg your pardon, but who is doing the harassing this evening?"

Now it was Varric's turn for a smug grin.  "Just returning the favour, Messere," he replied, with a small bow.  "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to."

"And what would those be?" Hawke cut him off coolly.  "Seduce innocent dwarves, spill the world's dirty laundry to anyone who can stand to listen to you droning on for hours, drink yourself into a stupour, rinse and repeat?"

Varric felt his fists clench without his permission, set his jaw and breathed deeply before he responded.  "Do you want my damn info or not, human?"

Hawke made a mocking flourish with her hand.  "At your leisure, Messere," she replied sweetly.

"Word on the street is, there's a former Grey Warden somewhere in Darktown."

"A former Grey Warden," Hawke echoed skeptically, and returned the better part of her attention to her ale.

"Listen, I didn't ask for his whole backstory," said Varric, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  "But I have it on good authority, and in case you're too wrapped up in whatever goes on under that nug's nest on your head to make the connection, a Grey Warden's knowledge of the Deep Roads could be a great asset to you."

"Am I to take hair advice from you, Varric?" Hawke retorted.  "Hasn't the Hanged Man any suitable water for bathing?  Why, if I had to guess, I'd say that adorable ponytail of yours is mere days from walking off by itself."

Varric's lip curled.  "Does the Red Iron require that you keep wearing torn up rookie armour, or is that gun show especially for Meeran?"

Hawke stood then, enraged, and if Varric were not so deeply satisfied to have gotten a rise out of her, he might have been a little more wary of the spark in her otherworldly eyes.  But she only stood, fists clenched tightly at her sides, and stared him down like she could murder him with her mind. 

When she spoke, it was low and quiet, but still so crisp he wondered if the bartender couldn't hear them from here.  What she said might as well have been the exact opposite of what he'd expected.  "Thank you for the information, serah.  Good evening."

* * *

 "What?" Varric balked at his brother's suggestion.  "No!"

"Would you rather your scruffy friend find all the treasure without us?" Bartrand did not quite whisper.  "Keep an eye on her."  He gesticulated wildly towards Hawke's other companions,   The lot of them."

"Fine," said Hawke coolly, an unsubtle reminder that she could hear him.  Then, to Varric, smugly, "Hope you take orders better than you aim."

Varric stroked Bianca protectively.  "Hope you watch your back better than your mouth," he retorted.

They cut through the remaining darkspawn easily.  Almost too easily, for the strange imbalance of their team and how out of practice Varric felt.  Varric had heavily questioned the people she had assembled, but they were all bizarrely willing to follow her, which he supposed was more than enough to get the job done.  With them now were the ex-Grey Warden about whom Varric had tipped her off and an ex-Tevinter slave she'd found through some of her old merc contacts.  ("You'd have been quite taken with Anso," she'd needled Varric afterward.  "Had that 'afraid of falling into the sky' look about him that you're so fond of.") 

They followed her lead easily, actually, like they'd done it for years, and Varric was able to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that her lead was not a bad one to follow.  He wondered where a scruffy refugee mercenary had learned to command so seamlessly, but did not question their success until they ran afoul of a dragon.

"Shit!"

Something she'd said to him, just a stupid joke that had almost coaxed a genuine laugh out of him, came back to the forefront of his mind in full force.  _Any entrance to the blighted Deep Roads will do, won't it?_ she'd sneered.  _So long as there's not a dragon sitting in it._

But while Varric was busy considering ironies and real-life foreshadowing, Hawke had already drawn her blade and launched herself at the dragon, and while Varric had known from hearsay that she was good, had been able to see for himself that her leadership against a few handfuls of darkspawn was good, he could not help but to be surprised at exactly _how_ good.  Anyone could take out Lowtown's trash.  Plenty of people—entire orders—fought darkspawn.  Not just anyone could launch herself at a creature of legend with such confidence.

"Shall I get you some snacks?!" she barked at him over her shoulder, then landed a hit that seemed almost...  "Son of a _bitch_ , Varric!" she added, and he was forced to return his attention to the task at hand.  He aimed Bianca, humming an old, half-forgotten song under his breath, and proceeded to create a veritable rainstorm of arrows.

The dragon fell, its remains still smouldering as Hawke shouldered her...weapon...and began the process of inspecting her wounds.  "Took you long enough," she remarked flatly in his direction.  "Do your hostile encounters usually give you a half hour of prep time before your first shot?"

"You're a mage."  The words tumbled out before he could think better of them, felt loud and clunky in the stillness of the cavernous underground.

Hawke didn't look at him.  Her hand only just slightly hitched as it picked at the fabric of her protective vest.  "Never seen a bladed staff before, Tethras?  And here I thought you knew everything."

"You fight like a warrior," he managed lamely.  Combed his memory for clues, found...surprisingly few.

"Yes, well," said Hawke flatly, still inspecting some imaginary loose thread on her clothes.  "Comes in handy.  Are you planning to run to the Knight-Commander now?  Because I daresay her office will be closed by the time you get back."

"No, I wasn't—sod it all, Hawke, I'm just trying to..."

"What?" Hawke turned on him, blue eyes somehow even brighter in the darkness.

"Understand," he finished, with a shrug.

"All the key points seem pretty clear to me," said Hawke coldly.  "Really, Varric, I'd always imagined you were a bit less thick-headed than I gave you credit for."

"Maker, I was trying to be nice!" Varric threw up his hands.

Hawke barked a mirthless laugh.  "You must be rightfully out of practice!"

"And you're the pinnacle of kindness?"

"No, but at least I don't pretend to be," Hawke countered, and something about her stance suddenly said _predator, poised to spring_.  "Lounging about the Hanged Man spinning wild tales so people will pay attention to my lazy ass.  Have you ever personally done anything worth talking about, Varric, or do you merely capitalize upon the adventures of others?"

"Excuse me if I don't want to go baring my soul to anyone who asks!" Varric shot back, and only faintly realized his stance had changed to match hers.  "And I'll have you know that plenty of people genuinely enjoy my company.  Can you say the same, Hawke?  I might spin stories, but what exactly do you think you bring to the table?  People will put up with a lot of bullshit from someone who's moderately skilled if she's more than willing to get her hands dirty."

"Self-righteous ass!" Hawke crowed.  "Who in fuck's name are you to talk to me about dirty hands?"

"Who are you to talk to me about being unlikeable?" Varric fired back.

Hawke's lip curled viciously.  "If you hate me so much, why did you keep helping me in the first place?"

Varric threw his hands up.  "You wouldn't leave me alone!" he cried.

Hawke drew herself up to her full height, set her jaw just so to indicate that she was looking down her nose at him, and replied, with that icy quietness that never failed to catch him off his guard, "Well, you may rest assured, Master Tethras, that once we make it out of this shithole, I shall never darken your doorway again."

As was often the case, Varric left the conversation with Hawke feeling the peculiar tugging sensation of anxiety borne of a kind of creeping melancholy, and he had no idea why he should feel this way.  He should only be so lucky as to be rid of her.

* * *

Things took a rather drastic turn for the worse when Bartrand sealed them in.

Varric saw red.  He felt like he must be imploding upon himself.  And the worst part was that the anger was not even really with his brother, but with himself.  He banged his fists against stone walls until they bled, screamed until he went hoarse, and Hawke, who had spent the last two days not speaking to him except to give orders, grabbed hold of him by the shoulders and shook him violently until he returned to some semblance of his senses.

"All finished with your hissy fit?" she asked him with her usual cool mockery, but there was a darker undertone to her voice, a thin layer of genuine concern behind her eyes, and that was enough to allow confusion to drown out a significant portion of blind rage.

He shrugged her off, averted his eyes.  "I'm not prone to murderous rages, if that's what you're worried about," he retorted.

"Can't say the same for myself," she said with a crooked smirk, and bizarrely, he almost felt better.  She clapped him too hard on the shoulder and returned to the search for another exit.

Once they'd clawed their way out of the vault, there was nothing but dark road stretching out before them in innumerable directions.  The Grey Warden, Anders, had no insight to offer.  The area was unmapped.  Varric privately wondered if, were it not for Hawke's steely determination, the rest of them might have just sat there and stared overwhelmed into the abyss until they starved to death.  But maybe that was the melodrama of memory.

As hours or days or weeks rolled by, though, with no sign of anything but further darkness and disrepair, and only the occasional darkspawn on which to take out their rising aggression, they began to argue ferociously.

"Always said if I ever saw the Deep Roads again it'd be too soon."

"Shame you came at all," said the Tevinter elf.  "It seems your knowledge of the Deep Roads was useless."

"Come now, Fenris," said Hawke thinly.  "Would you really rather be left to my healing?"

Rage flared visibly in the lyrium marked into Fenris's flesh.  "I'd rather die if it meant I never had to feel a mage's touch again!"

"That can be arranged, too," Hawke replied coolly.

Varric expected him to attack her, but before he even had the option, Anders cut in.  "Really?  You'd really rather die than have a mage heal you?  You've allowed one bad experience to colour your entire perception of—"

"One bad experience!"  Suddenly all of Fenris's rage was directed at Anders.  "You call a lifetime of torment _one bad experience?"_

"I have known a lifetime of torment at the hands of the likes of you!"

"Well, then, by your standards, oughtn't you to forgive and forget?"

"Gentlemen!" Hawke cut in.  "There'll be plenty of time to kill each other once we've made it out of the blighted Deep Roads."

"Oh, and then you don't care anymore?" Anders countered, incensed anew.  "Once we've helped you make it out alive, all the mages in Kirkwall can rot, for all you're concerned?"

"I'm not trying to have the Knight-Commander drawn and quartered, if that's what you're asking," Hawke replied evenly.

"Yet you continue to bandy your own power about unchecked?" Fenris began.  "You would endanger your family by association, subject yourself to the threat of possession under the same roof?"

"Hawke has a family?" Varric remarked without thinking.  "I'd always assumed you crawled out of a Fereldan swamp somewhere."

"None of your damned business, Varric!" said Hawke, with that same light evenness of tone, but now it came out thin and sharp.

"A family wrought with mages," Fenris gave away, instead, and now Hawke looked prepared to attack him.  "Are you quite certain you are the only one who remains?"

"Are you quite finished?" Hawke snarled at him, but he was undeterred.  "Yes, Fenris.  I'm no medic, but I'm fairly certain I know what death looks like."

Fenris was almost cowed by this admission, but still added, "I was referring to—"

"I know what you were referring to," said Hawke, with a sudden finality that overshadowed her irritation, "and if you'd met my mother or uncle instead of just running your mouth, you'd know they're as nonmagical as they come.  If my word is not enough for you, let it be my blade against yours.  _After_ we've survived this."

Anders started to hallucinate.  Talking to someone who wasn't there, raving like a madman just barely under his breath.  Fenris became somehow even more withdrawn, and repressed rage positively radiated from him, like waves or pulses.  Varric obsessively combed over his life for evidence to refute Hawke's claims against his character. 

Hawke wore her rage brightly upon her sleeve, face forever twisted into a kind of determined scowl as she soldiered onward day after day, or endless night after endless night, as it were.  Somehow, something about her—her fire or her rage or her sheer grit—gave the rest of them the strength to follow after her into the darkness.  As vehemently as Varric wished he'd never met her, he couldn't help but to admire her then.

That they stumbled upon anything of any value at all was nothing short of a miracle.  Ancient shit, buried into the very walls, so much a part of the Deep Roads that they wondered if removing it might cause the whole place to cave in, extinguishing what little chance they had of making it out alive.  But where there was old treasure, there was also new growth, some herbs that Anders knew how to fashion into something vaguely edible that probably wouldn't give them taint sickness.

Everything seemed much clearer then, and Varric was able to put aside his unnecessary mental preoccupation and actually be of some assistance.  He had never ached from hunger before, but he realized with sudden clarity that the others had, and bore it far better.  When they moved out, he fell into step with Hawke and clapped her weakly on the shoulder, meaning it as some kind of indication that he was here, that he was trying.

She regarded him for a moment, curiously, then returned her attention to the dark expanse before them.  "So, what's the word, Tethras?" she asked him in a voice gone too hoarse to have that painful clarity.  "Going to try to turn me into the Circle when we get out of here?"

Varric almost laughed, but even the impulse hurt his lungs.  "Try?"

"Never said I'd go quietly."

"I don't doubt you'd gut anyone who crossed you," said Varric.  "With aplomb."

"I've done it before," Hawke replied mildly.

"So why let me live with the option?" Varric wondered, with genuine curiosity.  He'd spent enough nights asleep under her watch, too weak to even think to fear for retribution, but he realized now, with a clearer head, that he'd never really thought she'd stab him in the back, and wondered what reason he had for such trust.

"Well, I was thinking about that," said Hawke, "and I realized you need me too much to let me go.  Otherwise you'd already have done."

"Need you?" Varric scoffed.  " _Need_ you?  Why would I possibly need you?"

Hawke shrugged.  "I haven't figured that out yet.  Maybe it's just because I'm good at doing your dirty work.  Plenty of people have kept me around for no better reason.  Maybe," she added with a sly sideways glance, "you like me better than you say you do."

Varric sputtered again.  "Keep dreaming, human," he spat.  "This dwarf is spoken for."

Hawke chuckled lightly, something very different from her usual sharp laughter.  "Don't flatter yourself, Tethras.  I've no interest in becoming the next Bianca.  For one thing, I've little patience for rambling letters of distant longing."

"Ass."

"For another, Hawke is a terrible name for a crossbow."

Varric's laughter surprised him, and it came out harsh and brittle.  "Fucking trebuchet, maybe."

The light, almost musical chuckle came again, and they fell into a silence that was almost companionable as they walked, which seemed like it should have been impossible after what had passed between them only days prior.

The change in mood made Varric bold, and he spoke before he had time to talk himself out of it.  "So...I only kind of...pieced together...about a loss in your family?"  He felt Hawke tense next to him, and added, quickly.  "I'm sorry.  That's all."

Hawke was quiet for a long time, so long Varric figured she wouldn't say anything at all, but eventually, when he'd almost stopped waiting, she spoke.  "Sometimes it seems like nothing but loss after loss in my family," she said quietly.  "But if all this shit is as valuable as you say, I'll be able to take care of all that remains, at least.  Anyway..." Varric saw her frown out of the corner of his eye, glance his way, and then quickly back to the road ahead.  "I'm sorry your brother is an ass.  I mean, more of an ass than you.  I doubt you'd pull a stunt like that."

Varric frowned, scratched the back of his neck, adjusted where Bianca hung over his shoulders.  "Bartrand will get what's coming to him," he said simply.

"Well," said Hawke, then hesitated before she continued.  "If you...find yourself in need of a hand, when that day comes..."

Varric looked up at her, trying and failing to disguise his shock.

The glint in her eyes gave her away an instant before she spoke, "Then you can fucking find someone else, because I'll be dead or retired by then."

Varric wasn't sure whether he laughed out of surprise or genuine amusement, but it hurt, and it also felt good.  He'd never known how to reconcile the two feelings, pain coexisting with something like release.  Maybe that was why he always seemed to seek them out in a pair.

* * *

After they came clawing and scraping their way back out into daylight, they were almost friends for awhile.  The malnutrition and strange haze from the Deep Roads made them too weak to pick unnecessary fights, and so they just sat in the Hanged Man, together, and drank in companionable silence.

"I had a brother," Hawke offered one night, out of nowhere.

"Was he a piece of shit?" Varric asked her, for lack of anything better to say.

"Definitely," said Hawke.  "But he had a lot of...honour about him, or whatever.  Wouldn't do anything dirty or underhanded unless he thought it was somehow Right."

"Not you, though," said Varric wryly.

Hawke shrugged, took a long sip of her ale.  "There's lawful, and there's right, and there's necessary, and they seldom coincide.  I hardly think my wrongdoings are gratuitous."

"Now who's self-righteous?" Varric snorted.

"When you believe in doing the Right Thing too hard," Hawke continued, with little more than a withering glance in his direction, "sometimes you end up doing something unbelievably stupid, like turning yourself over to the bloody Templars."

Varric raised his eyebrows.

"I also had a sister," she added, by way of explanation.

"Shit," he said, simply.

Hawke took a long swig, swallowed hard.  "How about you, Tethras?  Any more family to watch out for?"

"Thought it was none of my damned business."

"Quid pro quo," said Hawke lightly.

Varric wrinkled his nose.  "You're lucky I'm so sodding nosey.  All right, fine," he sighed, stretched, cracked his knuckles.  "No, I barely remember my dad.  He died when I was just a kid.  Mom said leaving Orzammar was what killed him.  Also said he liked to sing—ha!  Can you imagine someone with my face carrying a tune?"

"You can't stop humming when you shoot your stupid crossbow," Hawke countered mildly.

Varric felt the words he'd meant to say catch in his throat.  "You...heard that, huh."

"Well, yes, I'm not deaf," Hawke raised her eyebrows, as though it were obvious.  But no one had ever mentioned it before, even in passing.  When he didn't respond right away, Hawke leaned in.  "What's your problem, Tethras?  You hum, I wield a staff like it's a broadsword."  She waved vaguely in front of his face.  "Anders talks about justice under his fucking breath the whole damned time, like he's possessed, so you could have worse eccentricities, honestly."

Varric gladly latched onto the bait she'd thrown him, befuddled though he was that she had offered it in the first place.  "Been meaning to ask you about that.  Your staff _looks_ like a broadsword."

"Kept breaking regular ones," Hawke flexed her ever-bare muscles dramatically.  "What can I say, I'm just too strong for my own good."

Against his better judgement, Varric cracked a grin.  Try though he might to hide it as soon as it had shown itself, the smug smirk that beset Hawke's features told him he'd already revealed his hand.

"Like what you see after all, Tethras?" she teased, low and almost sultry.

And Varric would be hard-pressed to explain what the hell happened in that moment, but their eyes met, and they were both grinning, laughing, enjoying themselves, warm and alive and full of shitty ale, hands not a finger's breadth apart on the table, knees just barely touching beneath it.

"In your dreams, human," said Varric with a shake of his head, but somehow they had grown closer, and their fingertips were touching now.  "You're the one who can't seem to leave me alone."

"Is that what you and Bianca do together?" Hawke wondered, with a glimmer in her bright eyes that sent a shiver coursing through him.  She hadn't moved away yet, hadn't even broken eye contact.  "You go up to your room and sit on opposite sides so you can write her sexy letters?  I rather wish I could have read those, instead."

"Well, clearly you just didn't look hard enough."

"Clearly," said Hawke.  "We should go and look.  Right now."

"Right now?"

"Right.  Now."

_Don't make a scene_ , Varric almost said, but the words died somewhere in his throat.  If there was a scene to be made, they'd already have made it, sitting not a breath apart like this and then taking off together in a hurry.  But the Hanged Man was relatively empty tonight, and Hawke was here, pulling on his wrist with her warm, thin, long-fingered hands, smiling at him in a way that made her eyes shine in the dim light, and they had survived, they had made it out, and—

He barely got the door closed before she slammed him into it.

"Fuck!" he managed to bite out before her lips were on his, and she somehow managed to press her lanky form against him perfectly, and all thoughts of what had come before this moment, from their bickering to nearly dying a few dozen times in the Deep Roads to the absurdity of the moments that had carried them here, fled from his mind.

Varric had always thought humans were kind of funny-looking, but now he supposed he could find an appreciation for this particular human—everything about her was too long and lean—it looked all off to him, but it wasn't all spindly and unsupported the way he'd imagined.  She made a joke of it, but Hawke really was all muscle, all hard lines and sharp angles, and she cut a surprisingly pleasant figure in the candlelight as her clothing fell away.

Varric had always figured the height and breadth difference would be awkward, but at the moment, he supposed, he could find it useful.  After all, he was in an excellent position to examine the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the firmness of her ass, and—he almost smirked when the thought occurred to him—he bet he could catch her completely off her guard when he—

"Aaah!  Shit!"  She clutched onto his shoulders in surprise as he swept her quite literally off her feet.  Varric chuckled, carried her across the room to his bed and deposited her there.  She was laughing now, too, and tugging at the belt of his trousers, muttering _tricky bastard_ under her breath.

Suddenly his bed was a maze of long limbs, legs on either side of him, arms pulling him closer, drawing him in, eyes shining too brightly for the dim lighting, eyelids drooping and neck arching back when he pushed inside of her, and shit, maybe humans weren't so bad after all.  When he rested his forearms on either side of her, somewhere amid the mess of limbs, he could so easily capture a nipple between his teeth, and this could so easily elicit a scream from her lips that he employed this advantage as often as she'd allow it.

Hawke was _loud_ , and the walls of the Hanged Man were thin, but Varric could not bring himself to care.  When she started trembling against him, dug her fingernails into his back and cried out "Fuck, fuck, fuck, _Varric_ ," the sound of his name on her lips, real and breathless and not mocking at all, made him feel as though something had shattered, violently, and whatever it was might never be restored to him.

He bit back his own groan, buried his face in the nape of her neck, his teeth in the sharpness of her collarbone, allowed her scream to sound for him.  It occurred to him, vaguely, that he was trembling all over, himself, now, and that she hadn't released her vise grip, legs or arms, and so he simply remained, frozen somewhere out of time, reality a distant echo, no concern of his just now.

He didn't know how much time passed, but eventually she released him, and he rolled unceremoniously to her side.  As soon as he had landed, she was on her feet, and she was talking, and the words weren't making any sense.

"Well then.  I should be going."

"Going?" he echoed stupidly.  She'd already gotten her trousers on.

"Late.  Wouldn't want to make a scene."  She wasn't looking at him anymore.

_Make a scene_ , the words he'd bitten back earlier.  "What, embarrassed?" he needled her, as he was certain she'd have done in his place.

If she hadn't gotten caught up pulling on one of her boots, she might already be home by now.  "Mornings after are awkward, Tethras, no way around it."

Varric's heart sank.  _Back to Tethras now_ , he thought, and then balked at the sentimentality of the thought.  Of course back to Tethras now.  What, did he think this had altered the fabric of the universe somehow?  Stupid.

"Sweet dreams," she said sweetly over her shoulder.  "Oh, wait."  And then his door closed, and he was left naked and alone and very, very confused.

* * *

Things were decidedly tense after that.  Hawke didn't stop by the Hanged Man much anymore, barely even looked at Varric when she did.  What Varric knew about her, he mostly discovered from straight-up hiring people to follow her.  It was a little stupid, a lot sentimental, and very risky—he wasn't sure exactly what she was capable of, only that it was more than anyone would ever guess.

As it turned out, the mother and uncle she had mentioned were what little remained of the noble family Amell, and Hawke had used the money from their near-death experience to take back their family home in Hightown from what were almost definitely slavers.  Isabela, a Rivaini pirate who frequented the Hanged Man, the Tevinter elf Fenris, and the wide-eyed Dalish elf Varric had scared off a few months back, whose name was Merrill, were all seen milling about the place, so Varric guessed Hawke wasn't just ignoring all her former associates these days.

Being ignored wasn't anyone's favourite pastime, he guessed, but the whole progression of their acquaintanceship was completely bizarre, and it started to overtake his every thought.  He was used to being the one who didn't care, who could talk his way out, and he didn't care—he didn't!  So why should he care?  Why did he need the opportunity to talk his way out when there was nothing to talk his way out of?

The next time Hawke showed her face at the Hanged Man came at as opportune a time as any—Varric had finally found a buyer for the last of the Deep Roads shit, so he had coin to impart to her.  Everyone liked to be handed money, right?

But she showed her face to see Isabela, and she sat with her back facing him, and seemed to shift her shoulders every time he glanced in her direction, like she knew when he was watching her.  They drank and talked and played cards for a few hours, and then Isabela got caught up in someone she was obviously hoping to bang, and Hawke stood to leave them to it.

Varric narrowly avoided looking like a complete idiot, scrambling across the room to catch her at the door.  "Hawke!" he said, with some thin attempt at joviality.

She barely even looked at him as she passed.  "If you don't mind, Master Tethras, some of us have things to do—"

Varric blocked her exit with his arm.  This was completely ridiculous.  She inspected it with a look that was equal parts contempt and amusement.

"Hey."

Hawke raised her eyebrows.

"Hey!"

She met his eyes at long last.  Unnervingly blue as ever.

"Hey," he said again.  "So."  He gestured vaguely.  "What the hell?"

"Have you moved into freeverse poetry?  Because I must say the medium doesn't suit you."

Varric ignored her.  "You invite yourself into my room, you invite yourself into my...into my _life_ , and what, now you're just done with me?"

"On the contrary," said Hawke lightly, folding her arms, "I think it's rather common practice for two fellow adventurers to share a night of passion after the job is done.  None of them have ever so rudely blocked my exit with their breakable, breakable limbs."  She regarded his arm again with pointed distaste.  "One would think a famed storyteller would be more familiar with the conceit."

Varric let his arm fall limp at his side, took up the satchel slung over his shoulder, and shoved it into her hands.  Somehow he felt heavier letting it go than holding onto it.  "Here," he said, and pushed past her to leave.  "I was just going to tell you the rest of your share came through today.  Good work, and all that.  See you never, I guess."

"I have your stupid mail, by the way."

Varric stopped, but did not turn around.  "What?"

"Figured you'd have known it was missing by now, but I guess it doesn't matter that much to you, after all."

Varric took the bait.  He turned around.  Hawke's face gave away nothing.  "What the hell are you talking about?"  Varric received a veritable fuckton of mail almost every day, and most of it was garbage.  That something of any importance could slip through the cracks was pretty much guaranteed.

Hawke withdrew only one letter from a pocket on her vest.  "Now, if you don't mind, I'll go back to leaving you alone.  Just the way you always wanted it, Tethras."

And then she was gone, and Varric was left with an opened letter from none other than Bianca Davri.

Varric didn't sleep well that night.  He'd often thought it was a kindness that dwarves couldn't dream—he figured he'd have a lot of exhausting nightmares when he managed to sleep at all.  Instead, his own mind, divorced of any otherworldly power, kept offering up images of things that couldn't be helped: the look on Bartrand's face the last time Varric saw him, the look on a younger Bartrand's face the first time a younger Varric had managed to talk them out of serious trouble, the gangly human with the smug smirk he could no longer imagine completely despising, because there, too, was a tangle of too-long limbs wrapped around him, a too-clear voice crying out his name.

And then, a fantasy: those too-long limbs sprawled out upon his bed, relaxed, spent.  Soft smiles playing at their lips.  Happy.  Contented.

Stupid.  Varric got up and started to write, instead.  One good thing about sleepless nights and mental anguish was that they usually made for some decent material.

* * *

Things in Kirkwall started going to shit pretty quickly, and, surprise, surprise, it was starting to seem like Hawke had planted herself squarely in the middle of trouble.  Some business with runaway mages?  Some scruffy kid with black hair and blue eyes turned up at the scene.  Some business with possessed templars?  And oh, hey, there was this crazy human lady there, too—Maker knows why, but man, can she fight!  Some shit with a qunari hostage and a missing relic?  Well.  That came directly from the source, actually, because much as Hawke apparently despised Varric, she liked Isabela well enough to drag her ass back down to Lowtown for a drink or five.

Bianca had written him to tell him that she was coming to Kirkwall to take care of some business.  She mentioned, several times, that her husband would not be accompanying her, but did not directly ask for...well, anything.  Shit.  Varric really needed to get better at not showing his hand.  Probably knew without a second thought that Varric would drop everything for a few stolen seconds of her time.

If Hawke had a polar opposite, it might well be Bianca.  Bianca didn't come crashing in and out of his life like a natural disaster.  Everything about Bianca was subtle, withdrawn, understated, and definitely backhanded.  She would act all sweet to your face, all the while quietly crafting some kind of brilliant death machine to stab you in the back.  Bianca didn't crash, didn't slam; rather her touch was so light that he barely felt her arrive, seldom saw her leave, only got the vague sense that some essential part of himself had been tampered with, and he could not even begin to make out what had changed.

"Hi, Varric."

Varric almost spilled ink all over the page.  He hadn't even heard footsteps.  He steeled himself before he looked up, but it wasn't a lot of use.  There was this horrible twisting sensation already building in his chest, and one look at her seemed to rend his heart thoroughly in two.

She looked different.  Sadder.  But she was smiling at him, leaning against his doorframe, and she was here, and she was alone with him, and Varric swallowed hard before he managed only to say, "Hey."

"You seem surprised," she said, sounding faintly amused.  She stepped over the threshold.  "Didn't you get my letter?"

_Did you get any of mine?_ he almost bit back, but swallowed again, instead.  "Yeah.  Sorry about that.  Not responding, I mean.  Judging from the date, it took a little longer than you'd expect to get here."

"No matter," she shrugged, smiled again, let the hood fall from her head to reveal the soft gold of her hair.  He remembered with a pang how she used to let him braid it.  Now when she visited she always wanted to keep it in a tight bun, untouchable, unchangeable, even when...

Experimentally, he reached for it.  She caught his hands seamlessly, like she wasn't keeping him from anything at all, and repositioned his hands at her waist as she moved into him.

_Maker_.  Sometimes it was like seeing a ghost.  Like seeing a stranger wearing the face of someone he'd once loved. But his body didn't know that, refused to acknowledge it, and when she pressed up against him—did not slam, did not push, did not crash, only pressed, melted, melded—he released a shuddering sigh.

"It's...good you're here, actually," he managed, trying to avoid having to audibly swallow the lump forming in his throat a third time in as many minutes.

"Is it?" she wondered.

"Yeah, it's..." her hand was lingering at his belt now, fingertips just barely tugging, and Varric's concentration was wavering rapidly.  He'd been meaning to write her, been meaning to ask about the red lyrium they'd seen in the Deep Roads, if Bianca knew anything about it, what it did, if it had done something to...

But Bianca had a smirk on her lips that indicated she knew exactly what she was doing in distracting him, and sod it all if he was going to ruin this moment by thinking about all that shit.  "It can wait," he amended at last.

Bianca's smirk widened, and an old memory superimposed itself on the present, a younger, happier Bianca with her hair in cockeyed braids of Varric's devising, Varric with a flower crown she'd made for him, the two of them running around like a couple of kids, or a couple of love-drunk idiots, at least, in the woods outside the city.  They were both supposed to be other places that afternoon, Varric remembered, but he couldn't remember for the life of him where those places might have been.

She'd fallen into the grass and pulled him down on top of her—the way she did now, into his bed—softly, gently, so softly he could barely feel her touch, so gently he felt she might slip from his grasp at any moment, and so he held her tighter to him, kissed her more deeply, pulled at the ties on her braids so her hair fell loose in sun-soaked curls against the green, green grass.

In the present, Bianca wasn't quite looking at him.  In the present, she wouldn't let him touch her hair, pushed at his hands if he held her too tightly, closed her eyes when she climaxed, pushed him away before he'd even come close.

Varric was overcome by the strangest thought, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it.  Took long, slow breaths through his teeth to ease the tension as Bianca nestled herself into his side.  It seemed like something Hawke would have done, was what he'd thought—to take her pleasure and deny him his, for some twisted reason unknowable to him.

"So," he began, because he felt strange and anxious and unsettled and he needed idle chatter to calm his nerves, "how is Orlais?"

"Hm," said Bianca thoughtfully.  "It's pretty.  Warm.  Sunny.  You'd probably hate it."

"Yeah, you know me, I hate sun and warmth and happiness."

Bianca laughed mirthlessly.  "I sometimes wonder if you do."

Varric didn't have anything to say to that, so he remained silent for the rest of the time Bianca lay in his arms.  Eventually, like some sort of timer had gone off, she made the seemingly arbitrary decision to get up and gather her clothes.

"Well," said Varric, again talking more out of a weird, nervous kind of energy than because he had anything useful to say, "it was good to see you."

Bianca smiled at him as she pulled her hood up over her hair, so different, so much sadder than the woman he'd loved.  And damn.  Maybe it was mostly his fault, but he never could shake the feeling that she'd be much better off without him than she'd ever have been with him.

She held his hands when she kissed him goodbye, so softly, so gently she might slip from his grasp.

 'By the way," said Bianca, fingertips still lingering in his palms, "your human friend with the scruffy hair has been following me around since I set foot in the city.  If I didn't know better, I'd tell you to find a better spy."

"Shit."  Varric withdrew a hand to drag it across his face.  "Sorry about that."

"So you do know who I mean," said Bianca, with no small amount of interest.

"I have a pretty good idea, yeah."

"Who is she?" she leaned in.

"A crazy person."

"Mhm," said Bianca, pointedly.

"Don't say it like that—I don't know what she wants," Varric argued.  "Nosey as fuck—she dug through my trash a few times.  Found some...discarded drafts.  Probably just amusing herself, making up stories."

Bianca chuckled quietly.  "What, about us?"

Another flash of memory, brighter than the present moment.  Another Bianca with uneven braids and fire in her eyes.  In the present, Varric tapped this Bianca on the chin, leaned in against his better judgement for one last kiss.  "Can hardly blame her."

Bianca gave him that same, strangely sad smile she'd entered with, cupped his cheek with her hand.  "Take care of yourself, Varric," she said simply, and then left.

Varric sat down at his desk and cradled his head in his hands.  He didn't know why he felt like crying.  It wasn't like anything was different.

* * *

Sometime late into the night, when Varric made his way downstairs in hopes of a drink to soothe his rattled nerves, the Hanged Man was already mostly empty.  Good.  He needed something strong enough to knock him out.

"Enjoy your time with your little friend?"

"Andraste's _ass_ , Hawke!" Varric almost yelled, startled and irritable and vulnerable and exhausted.  "You know, if you turn out to be certifiably insane, I won't have misjudged you at all."

"You know, for someone you've pledged your undying devotion to, she seems awfully married to someone else."  She was leaning back in her chair, arms crossed, feet up on the table.  Corff didn't even seem to acknowledge her.  Varric briefly entertained the notion that he was hallucinating, and the real Hawke was off somewhere still ignoring him.

"Why am I never allowed to employ the phrase _none of your damned business?"_

"I suppose you are, but you're remarkably susceptible to blind perseverance."

Varric scoffed.  "Oh, is that what you call stealing my mail and following people around the city?"

"She's a very interesting person, this Bianca of yours, I'll give you that," said Hawke, almost pleasantly.  "Holds her cards close to her chest.  I expect you admire that about her, since you're so dreadful at doing the same."

Varric dragged his hand across his face.  "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

"She was talking to a lot of mechanics," Hawke continued, unphased.  "Don't suppose she made the crossbow?"

Varric sighed, tapped his nose.

"Ha ha!  I knew it!"

"Yeah, you're a fucking genius," said Varric flatly.  "Don't suppose I can convince you to let me drink my feelings in peace?"

"Hey now," Hawke unfolded her arms long enough to retrieve her glass from the table that contained her feet, and she raised it to him in a toast, "what fun is drinking your feelings without someone to hold your dirty ponytail when you puke?"

"That why you keep your hair so short?" Varric muttered.

Hawke grinned smugly, tapped her nose.

Varric relented, too tired to offer any real protest.  He asked Corff for a shot of the strongest stuff he had, followed by the bitterest ale he could find to wash it down.  He hesitated, shook his head, then added, "Make it two, actually."


	2. Flinch

She was sitting with the other elf this time, the tall, broody one.  This time, instead of a hand, Varric slammed a beer down in front of her face.  "Hawke!" he exclaimed, too brightly.  "Just the lady I wanted to see."

Hawke raised her eyebrows.  "If this is some sort of feeble attempt at bribery," she said, eyeing the beverage, "then I'll gladly humour it."  She gestured to the empty seat.

"I knew you'd see reason," he said as he sat.  He wanted this asking-for-help business over as quickly as possible.  "So, you know how you're not dead or retired yet?"

Hawke leaned back in her chair.  "You found Bartrand," she guessed.

"Such a brilliant kill-for-hire.  Have I ever told you your eyes are like looking into a fucking lyrium vein."

"Please, Varric, your flattery is more than I can bear," she said drily, but he could tell she was narrowly hiding a smile.  "Normally I'm sure you know I'd ask _what's in it for me_ , maybe throw around a few threats just for fun, but I didn't particularly enjoy almost getting buried alive, so I've got it out for your brother almost as much as you do.  You in, Fenris?"

Fenris nodded gravely.  "Gladly."

" _Wonderful_ ," said Hawke.  "Who else shall I talk into it, then?  Tell me more: what are we looking at here?  Carta?  Demons?"  She leaned in conspiratorially,  "Darkspawn?"

"And here I thought I was the one who spun stories," Varric snorted.  "Nah, not likely.  Just my brother and some of his people.  Nothing dramatic, just..." he waved his hand vaguely, "something I can't exactly go into alone."

Hawke sipped her beer.  "And you want to send me in to hide behind if things go south, how sweet."

Varric wrinkled his nose when he grinned at her.  "So glad we see eye to eye."

Things went south, as it turned out, almost immediately.

"Looks abandoned," Hawke's third companion remarked.  Guard-Captain Aveline was one of the few people Varric had met who knew Hawke before she came to Kirkwall—though, admittedly, only just before—and she generally came off as far too respectable and put-together to be one of Hawke's associates.  Indeed, from the sound of it, they hadn't exactly hit it off at first, but somehow, as Hawke seemed to do with people, they'd come to an understanding.

"Exactly what sort of lead are we following here, Tethras?" Hawke wondered coolly.

Varric shook his head.  "My...sources told me they'd seen deliveries.  People going in and out.  Signs of life inside."

"Hm," said Hawke.  "Do you suppose he put up the cobwebs to discourage tax collectors?"

Varric shot her a sidelong glance. He'd expected...doubt, definitely.  Pushback.  Threats.  Lots of threats.  Not...  "You think it's a trap?" he dared.

"One way to find out," she said lightly.  And then—and after the fact he could never be certain whether he'd imagined it—he was sure she winked at him.

When they'd wormed their way into the estate, all that greeted them were the requisite traps, easy enough to spot and disable, some very well-fed mice, and a few freshly-dead corpses.  Varric amused himself by thinking of how he'd turn this into a charming anecdote.  He'd go in alone, definitely, armed only with his trusty crossbow, and he'd take down a hundred of Bartrand's lackeys all at once, hardly even breaking a sweat as he did so.

When they ran afoul of some actual living creatures, the fantasy banished itself from Varric's head.  They looked...wrong.  Something about the eyes.  The look of it made his hands shake, and his aim suffered for it.

Hawke liked Aveline, Varric realized quickly, because she fought like a human battering ram.  Between her and Fenris, and Hawke's unique brand of fight-like-a-warrior, sting-like-a-mage, they made quick work of the crazed guards.

Didn't make them any easier to look at, though.

"Something was off about them," he remarked quietly.  _Damnit, Bartrand_ , he remarked in the privacy of his own mind.

As he reclaimed a few salvageable arrows, Varric was reminded of what Hawke had said, nigh on a year ago now, about her brother, and honour, and lawful and right and necessary.  He realized he'd thought the same thing about Bartrand—that some kind of mystical Dwarven Pride guided him in ways a surface-born dwarf like Varric could never fully understand, that no matter what kind of shit he pulled, he always at least thought he was doing right by someone.  By his family, by his people, by himself.

They found Bartrand's steward next, recently speared by one of the resident madmen, bleeding out against an upstairs wall.

"Hugin."

"Job's half-done already," Hawke remarked coolly.

"Hang on." Varric held out his arm.  She regarded it with the usual haughty disdain, but heeded it nonetheless.  To Hugin he said, "What's happened here?"

"Varric..." said the man.  "Bartrand.  He's not well.  The thing from the Deep Roads.  He sold it but it still sings to him.  Sings to the guards, too, maybe—like they've got...like they've got lyrium dancing in their eyes, that's what it looks like."

Varric felt his fists clench at his sides.  "Where is he?"

Hugin gestured to a study across the hall.  "Locked himself in.  I can't figure out the...but you could...right?  You're here to...to stop this, right?"

"Yeah."  Varric felt his brow furrow.  "Yeah, I'm...  We're here to stop this."  He fished in the satchel at his belt for his pins, set about picking the study lock, tried not to think about what they'd find on the other side.

Hawke, Aveline, and Fenris held their weapons at the ready behind him.

If this were a story, Varric would say there was a glorious battle with a half-mad Bartrand and his band of lunatic followers.  He'd say they used every trick in the book, that Bartrand's skill was a match for all four of them at once, that when they'd taken down his men, Bartrand fell to his knees and begged forgiveness for what he'd done.

Would Varric say that he'd obliged?

Behind the study door, they found no more crazed guards, no monsters to fight, no skilled assassin ready to take them all with one hand tied behind his back.

Behind the study door, Varric found what remained of his brother, pacing, hands clutched in his hair, with patches missing like he'd torn it out, singing nonsense under his breath.

"Stop it, stop it, _stop it!"_ he cried, collapsed to his knees, "no wait, come back, I need, I just need, how does it go?"

Fenris and Aveline lowered their weapons.  Hawke did not.  Varric approached.  "Bartrand."

Bright eyes, like lyrium danced in them, turned up to him, unseeing.  "I need to hear the song again."

"What song?" Varric shook his head.  "I'm here because—"

"Varric!"  Suddenly, recognition burned brighter, but it was wrong, all wrong, and Varric felt his stomach twist.  "You'll help me!  You'll help me, right, little brother?  Always helping.  You're here to help, right?  You'll fix it, right?"

"I—" the words caught in his throat.  He'd had half a dozen speeches prepared.  Some of them crueler than others, espousing Bartrand's many faults, many crimes against him over the years, all beautifully crafted to lead up to a killing blow.

"I don't know how to fix this," he said, quietly, and he thought maybe it was the truest thing he'd ever said.  In fact, Varric didn't know how to fix much of anything.  He knew how to talk, to cajole, to make things sound better than they were, to make himself seem like he knew what was going on.  He knew how to pretend everything was fine until it was, kind of, or he had gotten used to whatever fresh hell he'd gotten himself into.

That wasn't fixing anything, really.  It was nothing.  It was a baseline for existing.

"Stop it!' Bartrand screeched, then started up humming again, and now he was curled into a ball on the floor, rocking while he sang.  "I can't remember the words," he said, quietly.  "They were so...but I can't."

Varric knew how to make a call, in the moment, and live with the consequences, but more importantly, he knew how to avoid having to make calls.  He knew how to put that kind of burden onto someone else.  He knew how to find Hawke, because for all her faults, Hawke did not flinch in the face of a dragon.  Varric might want to retch at the sight of his brother rolling on the floor with madness in his eyes, and he might shy away from what he had come here to do.  Hawke wouldn't.  So, he turned his eyes away from his brother and onto her.

There was a subtle furrow to her brow he could not read, and had not expected, but her expression was set into the same grim certainty that had carried them through the Deep Roads.  Varric lowered his eyes to Bianca, cradled in his arms.  He tried not to hear Bartrand's singing and tried instead to hear the hollow echoes of those endless roads stretching out all around them as they slowly starved to death.  He tried not to think about the Bartrand who had yelled at him for breaking a plate and tried to think about the Bartrand whose eyes had glittered with greed at the prospect of some stupid trinket made out of lyrium.

He looked back up into Hawke's eyes, which were bright and clear and, now that he thought of it, not at all the same as looking into a lyrium vein.  He tried not to think about Bartrand, his brother, and tried to think about what Bartrand had almost taken from him.  He turned, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

"All right?" Hawke asked him.  Her voice was as quiet as it got, but it still rang out too sharp in the stillness of the little room.

Varric swiped a sleeve across his face.  "Let's get out of here," he said simply.

Aveline said her good nights and clapped Hawke on the shoulder as she departed.  Fenris lingered a moment longer, and Varric just caught Hawke squeezing his wrist before he left them.  Even though Hawke's new home was just across the way, she kept walking with him, an arm's length away, in the general direction of the Hanged Man.

"Don't you have somewhere to be, Hawke?" he wondered coldly.

"Hey now," she said, in an attempt at lightness that came out thin and harsh, "what's fratricide without a little drink afterwards?"

"Not really in the mood for a drink."  A boldfaced lie if ever he'd told one, and her chuckle told him she knew it as well as he did.

"Who knew you could be so funny?" she jabbed his arm.  "Come on.  My treat."

Varric sighed heavily.  "How could I refuse?" he said, and genuinely wondered at the answer.

* * *

Hawke and the elf definitely had a thing going on.

Varric didn't know why it should suddenly matter to him.  Not that it mattered.  More that...he noticed.  And he didn't know why he noticed.  She'd probably been carrying on with Isabela or Merrill before, or both, for all he knew, and he hadn't cared enough to notice the signs then.

Not that he cared now.  Just...noticed.

Varric wrote to Bianca for the first time in a few years.  He was almost proud of himself for exercising such restraint, but his reasoning was admittedly flimsy.  She had little reason to care that Bartrand was dead, and Varric had little reason to write it down.  He guessed it was just the first in a long line of attempts to pretty up the gory details in his own mind, but the act didn't make him feel as much better as he'd hoped it would, or indeed, any better at all.

Writing to Bianca was becoming sort of like writing to a journal.

Hawke was avoiding the Hanged Man again, or maybe avoiding him, or maybe both, or maybe she was just too busy banging the elf to give a fuck about him anymore, or maybe she'd never given a fuck at all, and Varric had always just been blowing whatever existed between them way out of proportion.  Wouldn't be the first time, to be certain.

When he spotted her kissing the elf, he was overcome by a dreadfully familiar sinking sensation.  He remembered it because it was the same feeling he'd gotten when he'd first seen Bianca Davri with her new husband.

After that realization had settled somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he could no longer entirely deny that he cared.  He would happily, however, continue to deny that he had any idea why he should.

It rarely rained in Kirkwall, but when it did, it poured.  Sleep eluded Varric, as seemed to be the case most evenings, and he had set about trying to work on his latest serial when the door of his room banged open and an unmistakable figure deposited itself upon his bed.

"Why, Hawke," Varric said flatly.  "What a pleasant surprise.  Please, do come in."

"Would you have let me in if I'd knocked?" Hawke wondered, but she didn't sound like herself.

Varric relented and turned around.  She was sopping wet.  "Sure," he said, "everyone wants his bed to smell like wet dog."

"If that's a jab at me, I'll allow it, but if it's a jab at my dog, I'll see your head on a pike."

"How graphic."

"I love my dog."

"I didn't even know you had a dog."

She was lying on her back, staring despondently at the ceiling, glassy eyes shining with unshed tears.  _Who knew unfeeling monsters could cry?_ he almost snapped without thinking, but in all honesty the sight of someone who seemed so unshakeable looking so beaten down was deeply unsettling.

"Something...on your mind?" he tried, awkwardly.

"Well, dogs, at the moment.  Also pikes."

Varric sighed, leaned his head into his hand.  "Something that would cause you to throw yourself into my bed?"

A smirk played at the corners of her lips.  "Oh, Varric, darling," she crooned.  "So many things."

"Maker's _balls_ , Hawke."  Much as he tried to banish it from his mind, the memory of his name as a cry of ecstasy on her lips had not quite managed to leave him.

Hawke's smile fell, and she sighed deeply.  "I was just thinking, you know, it would definitely suck if...someone you liked very much, or maybe only a little...were to, say, get dressed and leave as quickly as possible right after a night of inconceivable passion, and then proceed to ignore you.  Even if that someone were objectively kind of a piece of shit.  So."  She waved her hand vaguely.  "Sorry.  About that."

"Oh," was all Varric managed to say.  The word, _sorry_ , felt like a blow to the gut.  You didn't usually expect someone to apologize for something like that, especially when it still mattered.  "I'm...sure you had your reasons," he added feebly.

"Yes, don't we all," Hawke sighed again.

Varric squeezed his eyes closed, smoothed his hair, and stood decisively from his desk chair.  "Scoot over," he said, and she looked up at him with something like muted surprise for an instant before she obliged. 

"So," he said, when he had situated himself next to her, "what brought on this sudden revelation?"

"Oh, you know, nothing special," she hedged.  "Though if I believed in karma or some similar bullshit I might sing another tune."

"Is that how you played it with the elf, too?" Varric wondered, unable to keep the bitterness from his tone.  "Just two fellow adventurers, sharing a night of passion?"

Hawke's breath hitched, just barely, before she responded.  Varric wouldn't have even heard it if he hadn't been right next to her.  "Other way around, actually."

"Shit," Varric remarked.  "I always figured anyone who walked away from you ended up six feet underground."

"Shut up."  Hawke smacked his arm, but when he hazarded a glance in her direction, he saw that she was fighting a smile.  He watched her for a moment, overcome by a memory and a fantasy intermingled.  Outside the rain had dulled to a quiet patter, and the stillness made him bold, or maybe reckless.  When she caught him watching her, she turned her head, raised one eyebrow in a silent question.

"Make me," he dared.

Hawke's eyes flicked down, up again, and then so suddenly it sent him reeling, she moved seamlessly from lying beside him with hands folded on her stomach, to straddling him with hands pinning his to the bed.  "Thought you'd never ask," she purred.

"For a warrior-mage," he breathed, "you sure are fast on your feet."

She nipped his ear before she whispered into it, "You're supposed to be shutting up."

"You're supposed to be making me," he countered.

But if the feeling of her icy cold fingers against his bare skin as she tugged at the hem of his trousers didn't steal the words from his throat, or if the look she awarded him as she slid back to the end of the bed didn't do the trick, well, then her lips closing around him sure as hell shut him up.

He let out a choked gasp and buried his fingers in her hair.  He held on like he thought she'd stop if he so much as faltered, but it had been awhile, now that he thought of it, and he couldn't take the sensation for very long at all before he was pulling her away, pulling her towards him, never quite releasing her for fear she'd slip through his fingers again.

She kissed his lips now, and he nipped at her bottom lip to throw her off-balance enough to flip her over.  She let out a small cry of surprise, but there was delight sparkling in her eyes when she looked up at him, so different from the way she'd looked only a few moments prior.

Varric ran his fingertips along her sides, hoped he'd find sensitive spot to exploit, but of course Hawke never flinched.  Her hands were in his hair now, and she was pulling him down into a longer, deeper kiss.  It sent shivers coursing through him, but he would not be so easily distracted.  He continued to run his hands along her sides, over her breasts and the defined muscles of her arms, and just when she let out a sigh of contentment, Varric slipped a bit of twine around her wrists and secured the knot.

"Oh!" Hawke exclaimed, then, "You sneaky son of a bitch!" as Varric looped the other end of the twine around his bedframe, but she was still just narrowly avoiding grinning, and her eyes still sparkled as she squirmed.  "Where did you ever get twine?  Do you just carry twine around with you?"

Varric hooked his fingers upon the band of Hawke's trousers.  With his free hand, he cupped her cheek.  "Shut up," he whispered, with remarkable fondness.

Hawke leaned in.  "Make me," she challenged.

He pulled her trousers and smallclothes off easily without two of her overlong limbs getting in his way, and if that didn't stay the words on her tongue, or if the shuddering gasp she emitted when he hooked his arms about her thighs and buried his face between them didn't do the trick, well, then taking her clit between his teeth sure as hell stopped her forming coherent sentences, anyway.

It was easy to learn what she particularly liked—she positively keened when he hit the right spot or angle—and it wasn't long before she'd broken the twine on her wrists.  Her fingers were in his hair, then, pulling him impossibly closer, but he gladly obliged.  He looked up when he could manage it to see the way her face contorted in ecstasy, the furrow of her brow, the otherworldly eyes suqeezed closed, the lips slightly parted, gasping.

He briefly entertained the delusion that he could stay here forever, lose himself in her, that he would gladly die with the taste of her on his lips.

* * *

This time, at least, when Hawke went back to ignoring him, he was expecting it.  Indeed, he'd already chosen a couple of people to spy on her for him.  Fucked up?  Definitely, but as she herself had said, there was lawful, and there was right, and then there was necessary, and the way Varric saw it, this was necessary to keep himself from acting like a crazy person in whatever time Hawke's cold shoulder lasted.

It was surprisingly effective, too.  Varric learned that Hawke's dog was a Fereldan mabari named Maxine, Hawke's mother was named Leandra Amell, and her uncle named Gamlen, and that he still lived in a Lowtown hovel rather than joining the family in their reclaimed splendour.  He learned that Fenris didn't come by anymore, and Isabela and Merrill seemed to prefer that Hawke visit them in Lowtown.

Varric learned that Hawke had forced Aveline to ask one of her guardsmen on a date, that she'd helped Merrill with some ancient elven artifact, and that she'd humoured Anders in one of his mage rights rants long enough to root around in the sewers of the city for evidence of...something.  No one was quite clear on that.

He also learned, through various sources, that things between the city and the qunari who'd taken root there the past few years were beginning to escalate rapidly, and that for some reason, Hawke's name or unmistakeable description kept turning up in every story.

Sometimes Varric wished he could count himself among the friends she seemed to drag along into these kinds of nightmares.  Mostly he was glad he couldn't, and she didn't.  He was beginning to miss her, though, when she turned up again.  He'd been expecting the lengthy hiatus in her company, and he'd been expecting the requisite whispers of wild adventures involving her, but what he was not expecting was the way that hiatus ended.

It was another shitty evening, just after Varric had taken supper, rain coming down in droves, thunder shaking the very foundation of the city.  Varric had no reason to believe that a tentative _tap-tap-tap_ on his door, barely louder than the rain against the window, would be Hawke.  When he rose from his desk to open it and found her there, dripping wet, hand at the back of her neck, looking strangely small despite her height and musculature, he had no idea how to respond.

"Uhm?" was all he managed.

Hawke's face twitched.  Her brow furrowed.  "I...need help," she said, in the general direction of her shoes.

"...with?"

"Uh."  She scratched the back of her neck, paid no mind to her dripping hair.  "Not sure yet."  She raised her eyes to meet his, offered him a lopsided smile.  "Following a trail of blood.  Wanna come?"

Varric backed away, reached for his crossbow, never quite took his eyes off of Hawke.  "Yeah.  Yeah, sure," he said carefully.

She was no less cryptic on the walk through Lowtown.  Aveline and Isabela were with her already, but they were embroiled in some kind of argument that seemed unrelated, and Varric only picked up something useful about the trail of blood they were following when Hawke paid off some underfed kid to tell her what he knew: that a man had staggered into an older lady, and the lady had helped him to walk off into the unknown.

"Damnit, Mother," Hawke murmured under her breath.

Varric had been able to uncover very little about Hawke's mother aside from her name, and that was probably by design.  He knew that she had disappeared under dubious circumstances some twenty-five or thirty years ago, and that when she had returned to Hightown, it had been with the grace and cordiality one would expect of a particularly well-liked noblewoman.

The trail of blood led to an abandoned warehouse—didn't they always?—and when they'd crept inside, weapons drawn, to find the place empty, Hawke started muttering, almost too low and fast to understand, about a string of murders some templar had asked her to look into, of all things, and how it had all sounded like a lot of nonsense to her, all hopped up on lyrium and power probably, but—

"Hawke," Varric interrupted suddenly, and her bright blue eyes snapped to him immediately, as though she'd been hoping he would stop her all along.  He indicated an unevenness in the floorboards—a carefully-disguised trap door.

Her eyes flickered to the trap door and back up to him.  "Knew you were good for something, Tethras," she said, followed by a too-hard clap on the shoulder that was almost comforting.

Beneath the trapdoor, the first thing they found was a dead body.  "Shit," Hawke murmured, and turned it over.  "Oh," she remarked, confused, then moved forward as though the dead woman were nothing.

The next thing they found, guarded by a few run-of-the-mill demons, was what looked to be a shrine, to some woman who looked sort of like the dead one they'd just abandoned.  "Shit," Hawke said again.

Varric rubbed at his temple.  "Care to fill me in?"

"That...the woman in the painting...looks like Leandra, doesn't it?" this from Aveline.

"If I ever make something that pathetic, do me a favour and stick a dagger in my eye."

"Isabela, _please_."

"Yes, that's what I'm saying, _please_ stick a dagger in my eye."

"Now is not the time," Aveline grew somehow more stern by the second, but Isabela was undeterred.

"Fine, carry on with your moping, then."

Hawke ignored both of them.  She ran a hand through her hair, shouldered her weapon, and motioned that they should follow her.

Varric wasn't sure he'd ever understood how you could train to spot a mage a mile away, the way templars did, until that moment.  There were signs, sure—types of armour they favoured, the ways they tried to hide their staves, sometimes the general build of the body—but Hawke ticked every box on Varric's list, and he hadn't noticed it in her.

This man, though...there was something about him, some...aura.  Varric couldn't rightly say what it was, only that it screamed _mage_.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," he said.  "Leandra was sure you'd come for her."

"Yes, well," said Hawke.  "Here I am.  Now, where is Leandra?"

His eyes...lit up.  "You cannot understand my purpose," he said, and there was something extra to his voice.  "She was special.  She was chosen!  And now she is part of something more!"

Hawke's hands clenched into fists at her sides, but her voice remained clear and crisp and piercing as ever.  "Right, I get it, you're crazy, let's move this along, please."

"Love is a powerful magic, you know.  I pieced her together from memory.  I found her eyes...her skin...her fingers...and then!  Oh, then..."

The figure of a woman, all wrong, all _wrong_ , stood on wobbling legs, like its parts were attached but only just barely, and it turned to face them.

"Then, I found her face," said the man.

Hawke staggered backward.  Her hands fell limp at her sides, clenched again, and then she glanced around them as though she expected to be surrounded.  She closed her eyes, inhaled, and then she sprung.

The man was a powerful mage, that much was certain, and he summoned a few demons to aid him, sure, but Hawke ripped through them like it was nothing.  Once she'd taken down the last of his otherworldly companions, she drew a knife from somewhere on her person and lobbed it into the madman's head, right between the eyes.

The madman fell, and Hawke retrieved her knife only to kick him in the head with her boot a few more times, long after the light had left his eyes.  Across the room, the atrocity wavered on its mismatched legs, its glassy eyes cleared for a moment, and just before the inevitable descent, it said, "Marian!"

Hawke's attention refocused, and she rushed to catch what remained of her mother in her arms, fell to her knees cradling the monster with her mother's face.

"I knew you'd come," it said.  Its voice was like a thousand unhappy spirits, all layered on top of each other.

"Not soon enough," said Hawke.

"It's all right, Marian," said the monster.  "I feel...it's better now.  This way.  Soon I'll be with Carver, and with Bethany, and with your father.  I'll be at peace then.  I've missed them so."

 _But who will be with Hawke?_ Varric wondered suddenly.

"Good," said Hawke, with a little nod.  "Yes.  Tell them hello for me, won't you?"

"You'll be fine, darling," said the monster.  "You always have been."

And then the light went out of the monster's eyes, and Hawke bowed her head low, the slightest shaking of her shoulders the only indication that she was crying.

No one dared approach her.  No one dared so much as move.  For a moment it seemed like no one could even manage to draw a steady breath in the silence that followed.

Varric took a tentative step towards her.  "Hawke..."

No response.  No change.

"Hawke."  A little closer.

Still nothing.

He reached out to her, half-intended to lay a hand on her shoulder, but stopped just short of making contact.  "Marian," he tried, soft as the breeze.

"Don't call me that," she snapped, but her voice was too heavy and tear-laden to sound particularly menacing.

Varric's hand found its place on her shoulder.  "There she is," he said.

"Leave me be," she said.

"Hawke," said Varric, as firmly as he knew how, "we have to go."

" _Please_ ," she choked out.  Her shoulders twitched with a fresh sob.  "If you've any respect for me at all, just leave."

Varric inhaled slowly, between clenched teeth, smoothed his hair, still soaked from a mixture of sweat and the rain they'd trudged through to get to this shithole.  He sized Hawke up a moment, crouched on the floor, spine curved and arms hanging limp from where the monster that bore her mother's face had slipped to the ground.  It would take some finagling in this position, but he'd picked her up before with little trouble.

"Fortunately for you," said Varric as he scooped her up into his arms, "I don't."

To his surprise, Hawke didn't put up a fight.  Instead, she crumbled.  And she _wailed_.  Threw her head back and keened, a horrible, visceral mourning cry, so piercing he was sure they could hear her at the top of Sundermount.  So piercing he was sure it had pierced right through to his heart, where the sound would forever linger in his memory, no matter how little he wanted it there.

He deposited her in his bed, a little because he wasn't sure he could carry her all the way up to Hightown, but mostly because he didn't want her to be alone in the mansion she'd bought for her mother.  He could hear her sobs from downstairs for the better part of an hour before she tired herself out, and Varric returned warily to his writing desk.  He'd had no intention of getting any sleep tonight, anyway.

Sometime around midnight, he leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, and hazarded a glance in the direction of his bed.  Hawke was curled up around a pillow, face still scrunched up and puffy from crying.  He thought about the way she'd once snapped at him whenever the topic came up— _none of your damned business, Varric!_ —how fiercely she had protected her mother, how tirelessly she had fought to give her mother what she wanted, and how her mother had dismissed her efforts as natural.  _You'll be fine,_ she'd said, her dying words.  _You always have been._

When Varric, who was so incredibly an outsider to the situation, could so clearly see that Hawke was not fine, perhaps never had been.

It was truly bizarre for Varric's door to burst open when Hawke was already inside.

"Hey, sleepyhead!"

Aveline followed close behind.  "Isabela, don't."

"Boo hoo, dead family, creepy magic, who needs them.  This is kind of a pressing matter, isn't it?"

"By the Maker, Isabela!"

But Hawke was awake, rubbing furiously at her eyes, stretching and straightening her shoulders, already saying, "Right, sorry, what's happening?"

"There's a...situation.  With the Arishok.  And he...listens to you.  I had hoped you might...but it's not—"

"Uhm, yes it absolutely is urgent—the city is basically on fire," Isabela interrupted.  "Also, someone's going to kill me, so if you could cut your brooding short for the evening, that would be most helpful."

"Right, yeah, sure.  The Arishok and fires and someone's going to kill you.  Just..." she blinked, assessed her surroundings.  "Right.  Okay."  She stood on shaky legs, adjusted her armour, grasped at the wall to make it to her staff.

"Hang on," Varric managed at last.  "Can't you see she's not—I mean, can you give her a minute?"

"That's what I was saying, but—"

"Yes, yes," said Hawke, waving her hands, "thanks for the concern, thanks for the use of your bed, smell of wet dog, ha ha, now let's get on with this."

Varric stood.  "Hawke, listen—"

"I don't want to hear it right now, Varric."

Varric felt his brow furrow, felt himself set his jaw as he moved to place himself firmly in the path of the door.  Isabela and Aveline, maybe out of instinct, removed themselves from the line of fire.

Hawke looked...exhausted.  "Get out of my way, Varric."

"Look, you're obviously—"

Without warning, she grabbed a paperweight from his desk and threw it at him.  He ducked in time, and it shattered against the doorframe next to Isabela's head.  "Shit!" she cried.

"Hawke!" Varric waved his hands wildly.  "Can we just have a fucking conversation for once, before you go storming off into the next battle?"

But she already had his ink well in her hands, and she threw that, too.  "I don't want—" _crash_ "—your fucking—" _crash_ "—pity, Varric!"  And now she was upon him, shoving him backward.

"Hawke!" this from Aveline, but Hawke did not heed her.

"Hawke, what the—"  He felt nothingness beneath his foot too late.  His shoulder hit the wall, his knee hit a stair, his head caught another one, and he landed at the bottom of the stairs flat on his back, vision blurring and swimming but for the image of Hawke storming down the stairs after him, stepping over his body, and spitting at him before she made her exit.

He hated her then.  He fucking loathed her.  Hoped she got exactly what she deserved, to rot alone in the bed she'd made for herself.  Hoped the sodding qunari Arishok speared her with the giant axe he kept perched at his side so she could feel what she did to him every time she crashed in and out of his damned life.

He hated her, and yet...in that moment, a part of him started to understand her.

"Shit, Varric," said Isabela, offering him an arm.  "You okay?"

Varric blinked a few times.  Took her proffered hand.  "Yeah.  Yeah, fine."

"Always knew she was a wild card, but..."

Varric waved a hand vaguely, dusted himself off.  "No," he said, and the words that followed surprised him, even though he was the one speaking them, "go easy on her.  She just lost...shit, her whole family, basically."

Isabela groaned.  "Family, family, family, " she sneered.  "Anyway," she clapped him on the shoulder, "best be going before Hawke slaughters the whole city."

"Are you sure you're all right?" Aveline asked him now.  She was still making her way down the stairs, looking more than a little stunned.

"Yeah, yeah, just..." he rubbed his shoulder, inhaled deeply, sighed.  "You know what, nevermind.  I'm coming with you."

* * *

When Isabela disappeared with the relic she'd asked them to hunt down, Varric was sure Hawke was going to lose it for good.  What little life she'd had left in her eyes was extinguished, stamped out like a cigarette beneath the heel of a boot, as she read Isabela's note.  What remained, all that ever seemed to drive her onward, was only that grim determination that would have been positively awe-inspiring if it weren't so terrifying.

"All right then," she said quietly, letting the note fall from her hand.  "Let's go...pick up Fenris, on our way up there.  Maybe he'll know some..." she waved her hand vaguely "qunari bullshit that'll help."

Kirkwall was crawling with qunari wreaking havoc.  Varric had never even seen so many at one time, let alone fought them.  He learned a few hard truths very quickly: first, his usual arrows barely grazed them.  Second, Hawke's brand of magic barely gave them pause.  Third, if fighting a regular mage could be dangerous, fighting a qunari mage was like going up against the forces of the universe.

Fortunately, their leader was a force of nature in herself.  Hawke never once faltered, but Varric did see her stagger as their war of attrition drew on.

They fought their way through Lowtown and did their best to sneak through the side streets of Hightown to retrieve Fenris.  They watched as people were dragged kicking and screaming through the streets and did nothing to stop it.

Fenris looked like he'd been waiting to be summoned.

"Great, excellent, all right," Hawke murmured, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand.  "Okay then.  Full team.  Let's follow the crazy people taking hostages."

"Hawke?" this from Fenris, a question left largely unspoken.  Everyone seemed to understand his meaning except for the intended recipient.

"Problem, Fenris?" she snapped.

His face fell almost imperceptibly.  "Lead on," he said gravely.

They'd barely made it out the front door when a qunari warrior spotted them.  He said something to his companions which contained the word "Hawke," and then they charged.  The leader knocked Hawke off her feet with the impact of his shield, but only for an instant.  She scrambled back to her feet and landed a hit to his back that packed an extra punch of something that looked icy and unnatural, and he went down quickly.  Hawke turned and brandished her weapon only to be met with a blast of magic that seemed to come from nowhere.

The Saarebas showed himself, towered over all of them, and prepared to strike his killing blow.  Then, all of a sudden, the magic disappeared from his palms, and a sword speared him clean through.

Knight-Commander Meredith herself appeared as the qunari mage fell, and she lobbed his head off for good measure.  Blood spattered across her face in an arc that was almost elegant, and her templar armour glittered in the dim light from the fires that raged in the city streets.  She approached Hawke and offered her arm.

Varric tensed.  Hawke took it without hesitation.

"Knight-Commander," she said, as though it were nothing, as though she weren't a lifelong apostate and the Knight-Commander didn't have a reputation for openly despising magic.  "My thanks for the help."

"It seems you hardly required it," said Meredith.  "I know you.  The name Hawke has turned up in my reports.  _Many_ times."

The feeblest of smirks graced Hawke's features, but her eyes remained dead and glassy.  "What can I say," she said lightly, "I get around."

"Knight-Commander," Aveline stepped in, "it's good we found you.  The qunari are—"

"It's obvious what they're doing," Meredith cut her off coolly.  "The Arishok had holed himself up in the Keep with his hostages."

"Why would he be taking hostages?" Hawke asked her.

It was Fenris who answered.  "He means to gather everyone of import in one place.  Those who agree to convert...live."

"Charming," said Meredith drily.

"We'll meet you there, then?" said Hawke, with that distant echo of a lopsided grin.

Meredith sized her up briefly, and Varric felt his blood run cold.  He was sure she would see it, see Hawke's magic, and cut off her head, too, burning city be damned.  "Good," she said, instead.

Along the path to the Keep, they were greeted by more qunari, as well as a few groups of the requisite looters hoping to take advantage of a bad situation.  Here, the street was littered with the bodies of what looked to be Circle mages.  There were a few still standing when they arrived, but they were fading fast.  The First Enchanter, a kind-eyed elf with a prominent receding hairline, was doing his best to shield them, but another Saarebas was bearing down on him.

And here, too, was something truly remarkable about Hawke that Varric was only just beginning to piece together: whenever she came into contact with some...technique, some style of fighting she admired, she was able to mimic it, incorporate it into her own. 

Hawke didn't have the templar ability to dispel magic, but otherwise, the sequence was almost identical: the Saarebas loomed over the First Enchanter, and then Hawke speared him through the chest, cut off his head, and twirled her strange staff with a flourish just as Meredith had done before returning it to its sheath.

Then she offered Orsino her arm.

"My thanks, Hawke," he said.

"Seems you fared better than the other mages," said Hawke.

"The other..."  Orsino's kind eyes fell upon the bodies that lined the streets.  Suddenly he looked much older.  "I told them to run," he murmured.

There came the sound of heavy footfalls on the approach.  They turned and drew their weapons, but it was Meredith and a smattering of templars.  Strange, Varric thought, to see mages let down their guard at such a sight.  Then again, Hawke never let down her guard entirely.

The First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander were becoming rather infamous for their increasingly public distaste for one another, but in this instance, Hawke quite efficiently talked Orsino into following Meredith's lead without protest.  They fought their way up the stairs to the Keep as a unified front, pretending at following Meredith's lead when in truth it was Hawke who guided them, and a good thing, too.  The qunari did not go down easily.

"More are coming!" Orsino called from the foot of the stairs.

The Knight-Commander turned her gaze like polished steel upon Hawke.  "Go," she said.  "See what you can do for the Viscount.  We'll hold them off."

Hawke nodded curtly, and with the Knight-Commander's blessing, they entered the Keep and found only the stillness of death.

"There's something off about her," Varric remarked at long last, desperate to give voice to the thought.

"There's something off about all templars," Hawke retorted mildly.

"Careful, Hawke," said Aveline.  "You're lucky the Knight-Commander didn't haul you off to the Gallows on sight.  She's not renowned for showing mercy to apostates."

"You know, I bet if you shouted it from the rooftop everyone in Kirkwall could hear you better," Hawke snapped.

"I'm just saying, it's strange, isn't it?  Templar training is meant to instill its soldiers with the skills to sense magical ability, but Meredith didn't even seem to acknowledge it in you."

"Please, by all means, run and point it out to her," Hawke's lip curled.  "Been hiding it all my life and now a blighted templar's widow is going to give me away out of curiosity."

Aveline's expression grew stonier than usual.  "You've had a long night, Hawke, so I'm going to pretend you didn't say that."

They walked towards the distant sound of commotion in silence.  A scream sounded from behind the door.  Hawke didn't even flinch as she pushed it open.

" _Shanedan_ , Hawke," the Arishok's eyes fell upon them as they entered.  "I expected you.  You alone are _basalit-an_.  Few in this city command such respect."

"Then I expect you know why I'm here, as well," said Hawke evenly.

The Arishok tossed something across the room.  It tumbled down the stairs and rolled across the carpet, and the nobles crowded into the hall screamed as they recognized the mangled face of the Viscount.  The Viscount's crown fell from his severed head and rolled still further to land at their feet.

The Arishok took two steps forward, each of them monumental.  "So tell me, Hawke.  You know why I am here, and you know I cannot withdraw.  How would you resolve this conflict?"

"My associate stole your Tome of Koslun," Hawke squared her shoulders.  "I'll hunt her down and then you can leave Kirkwall."

The Arishok's expression grew impossibly darker.  "Is this not an ally of yours?" he challenged.  "One I suspect you aided?"

Hawke's face gave away nothing.  "It was my intention to retrieve the Tome and return it to you," she said simply.  "Isabela will pay for what she's done."

"Admirable," said the Arishok.  "Yet I still do not have it, nor its thief.  You are here.  You must answer for the crimes of those who serve you."

Fenris stepped forward suddenly, and said something almost frantically in Qunlat.  The Arishok turned his attention to Fenris, said something back, cool derision shining in his dark eyes.  Fenris shook his head, said something that contained the phrase he had used to describe Hawke— _basalit-an_.

The Arishok turned back to Hawke.  "The elf has proposed a duel," he said.

Varric's gaze shifted wildly, almost frantically to Hawke, but as usual, her face gave away nothing.  Her head was inclined, studiously, not at the Arishok, but at Fenris.

"Care to...fill me in on the other bits?" she wondered coolly.

"Under the Qun I would not battle a female," said the Arishok.  "But I have granted you basalit'an, the rank of respected outsiders.  The elf insists that you are basalit'an more than you are female."

Varric couldn't help but to think that in another situation, Hawke would have made at least three ill-advised jokes by now.  He wondered if that version of Hawke would ever exist again, after this neverending hell spiral of a night.

"I see," said Hawke slowly.

The room felt...too cold, or too hot, all at once.  Varric wanted to...say something, to protest, but the words died somewhere in his throat.  He sized up the Arishok, really took a good look at the man, and panic coursed through him.  The Arishok was easily more than twice Varric's height, maybe twice his breadth, too, while he was at it, and the battleaxe he wielded looked to be about the size of the woman he challenged.

"What say you, Hawke?" the Arishok pressed.  "Do you agree to a duel?"

She tore her icy blue gaze from the elf at last, and settled it upon the qunari, stone-faced and square-shouldered, and she nodded once.  In spite of everything, Hawke never once flinched.  There was something incredible about that.

The fight was...brutal.  Hard to watch, but impossible to look away from.  It began as a sword against an axe twice its size, but Hawke's magic quickly began to show itself, and Varric suddenly realized how seldom he saw it, how carefully she hid the signs that templars trained their entire lives to spot—how she may have even fooled the Knight-Commander with her stealth.  He could hear a few gasps, a few muted whispers throughout the crowd of the Arishok's hostages as they noticed it, too, but he doubted they would dare say anything against her if she survived this.  For one thing, she was fighting for their safety.

For another, she was terrifying.

The Arishok landed a blow to her legs that knocked her to the ground.  Varric almost covered his eyes—was sure it would be over right then and there.  He was winding up for a blow to the head, or maybe to chop her head clean off like he'd done to the Viscount, and he couldn't, could not, watch if Hawke—

But Hawke rolled out of the way at the last possible second, crawled and clawed and dragged her way across the floor.  The Arishok's failed blow had bought her a few seconds, and she used every last one of them.  She leaned heavily on the far wall, dragging herself back onto her feet, and turned to face the Arishok with eyes gone glassy from pain.

The Arishok stood, weapon at the ready, and watched her, waiting for what she would do.  Maybe he thought she would fall.  She certainly looked like she couldn't stagger more than a few steps.  He didn't know.  How could he know that this woman had carried a team of strangers, near-enemies through impossible situation after impossible situation, with nothing but determination to carry her?

Hawke's shoulders rose and fell, slowly, once, twice.

And then, she _charged_.

Varric saw surprise register on the Arishok's stony face.  He saw the Arishok stagger backward, only half a step.  Then he saw Hawke and the Arishok's blade collide.  He saw Hawke speared upon the blade, stabbed clean through and swept off the ground as though she were nothing.  He saw, but he did not hear, because suddenly everything sounded like he was hearing it from underwater.  Someone was screaming.  Everyone was screaming.  Maybe Varric was screaming, too.

The Arishok flung Hawke across the room, followed by an arc of her blood.  She fell, a limp ragdoll, against the far wall and onto the floor in a heap, and the Arishok shouldered his weapon to indicate his victory.

Varric fell to his knees.  Everyone was screaming.  He was numb.  In his periphery, he saw the elf fall to his knees in turn.  On the other side, he saw Aveline's face crumple behind her hand.

He could not move, could not feel, could not breathe.  He stared at the heap on the floor that had been Hawke, praying for the impossible, praying that she couldn't really be just mortal, just a person who would die if she bled too much. 

He wished vehemently, for the first time in a long while, that he had never met her, never conceded to her demands, never touched her, never loved her, never even _seen_ those too-blue eyes, because then he would not have to feel the all-encompassing nothingness that was losing her.

The heap twitched.  Heaved.  Moved.

Varric felt a choking sob escape his throat.

Hawke's hands appeared, planted themselves in front of her upon the rich carpeting, and she heaved herself up, bright blue eyes shining otherworldly beneath the mess of black hair plastered to her head with sweat and blood and Maker-knew-what-else.

She heaved a few long, shuddering breaths.  She was trembling all over.  Varric dared a glance around.  No one had noticed yet.  They were all overcome with grief or terror or victory.

One of Hawke's hands was grasping for something, concealed within her clothes, and the movement drew his attention to the wound in her abdomen.  Oh.  Oh, that looked...no one should be moving after that.  No one should be alive with her entrails looking like they would come pouring out of her at any moment.

Hawke produced a small knife, held it aloft with her trembling hand as she watched the Arishok gloat.  She was a good shot with a knife, for someone who didn't seem to use it much.  Maybe, Varric thought, _maybe_ this was his impossible miracle.  Maybe Hawke could make the shot, and the Arishok would—

Hawke dug the knife into her own arm.

There were things in Varric's life he wished he could remember better.  Things he thought would make better stories if he had more real details to colour them in his mind.  He wished he remembered more about the plate he'd broken to make Bartrand so mad at him.  He wished he remembered the colour of his father's eyes, or the song his mother used to sing when she thought no one could hear.  He wished he remembered the first words Bianca had ever spoken to him, or the last time she'd looked at him like she loved him.

There were things in Varric's life he wished he could remember better, and then there were things he wished he could forget.  But they burned too bright, stained too dark, and he knew without even thinking that he would never be able to dull them in his memory, that they would haunt him for the rest of his sorry days, so much clearer than anything good could ever hope to remain.

Hawke drove her knife into her arm, and she dragged it back, and across, and down, and the glyph she had traced flashed bright like an explosion, and she was back on her feet, and she was charging again, a warrior's cry on her lips as she ran, like she'd never once been hit, even as blood gushed from the wound in her abdomen and the fresh wound on her arm.

She landed a heavy hit to the back of the Arishok's neck before he'd even fully realized she was on the approach.  The room exploded into frenzied cheering as the battle between them exploded afresh. 

Varric wondered, vaguely, whether a blood mage outside the boundaries of the Imperium had ever been cheered before.

The Arishok tried, several times, to spear her through the way he had before, when he'd taken her down, but now she was too quick for him.  He lunged and she dodged, he slashed and she jumped.  She made little pretense at swordfighting.  Ice and lightning crackled against the too-warm room, and when the Arishok was hit with one of these...these _mage's spells_...he finally began to falter.

In the end Hawke ran for her life.  The Arishok let out a mighty battle cry and charged after her, and he did not stop.  She threw magic over her shoulder with abandon as she ran, but she did not slow down, did not falter, did not even look back until he began to stagger.

When at last the Arishok fell, Hawke hit him again and again and again, with magic and with her staff and with her boot, to be sure he stayed down.  She was a wild animal, snarling and foaming at the mouth, and her eyes glowed too brightly even for her, and the room fell impossibly silent in the wake of her fury.

Just as the doors of the Keep burst open, Hawke dropped her strange staff and collapsed to her knees.

"What's happened here?" Meredith demanded.

"Well," Aveline spoke up, very quietly, yet unbearably loud in the stillness of the room, "the conflict has been resolved, Knight-Commander."  She gestured to Hawke, doubled over and heaving on the floor not an arm's length from the very dead Arishok.

The room erupted into noise, and Varric came crashing back to his senses, or maybe crashing completely out of them.  He rushed across the empty floor towards Hawke.  He had a half-formed idea to put himself between her and the Knight-Commander, between her and her companions, between her and everyone asking too much while she lay on the floor bleeding out for them.

He found her eyes.  "Hey, hey, stay with me."

She cupped his cheek in her hand, almost gently.  "Get Anders," she wheezed.  Then the unearthly light left her eyes, and she fell unconscious against his shoulder.

Varric motioned to Fenris while Aveline talked.  Between the two of them, and with the convenient cover of the surviving qunari and hostages running amok in the absence of this debacle's driving force, and with the aid of some kind of twisted miracle, they managed to get Hawke out of the Keep without Meredith's interference.

Getting her to Darktown unnoticed was no small matter, either.  The city was in a new kind of chaos now, news of what had transpired at the Keep spreading slowly.  Qunari calling off their assaults and qunari still fighting, people running to and running from.  But Fenris carried her and Varric watched his back, and Aveline caught up with them under the pretense of tracking them down for the Knight-Commander, and when they came staggering into Anders' makeshift clinic, he seemed remarkably unsurprised to see them.

The clinic was filling rapidly, but Anders found a quiet corner for Hawke and shooed everyone away so that he could work.  At first it just looked like the usual glow of healing magic from his hands, but gradually something shifted.  The glow started to crawl up his arms, like cracks in a foundation, and his eyes started to glow like Hawke's had when she'd called upon blood to aid her in battle.  He started to mutter to himself, low and harsh, in a voice that was not quite his own, and beneath his hands, Hawke drew in a ragged gasp and opened her eyes.

"Shh, lie still," said Anders when she turned searching eyes upon him.

"Am I speaking with Anders or Justice?" Hawke rasped.

Anders ignored the strange question.  Hawke turned to where her companions stood, all of them huddled together like they were friends, like anything bound them to one another besides concern for this person, this sharp-tongued, cocksure human who had a knack for finding herself in deep shit, who looked death in the face and said, sure, that's very traumatic and all, but what's next?

Hawke continued to needle Anders while he stitched her back together, and one by one her companions came forward, wished her a swift recovery, and turned to leave.  There would be many catastrophes to contend with after the events of the evening.

Varric, for his part, was sure there were at least ten things he ought to be attending to, but couldn't even begin to bring himself to care.  He lingered in the corner of Anders' clinic, idly inspecting his own relatively minor scrapes and picking at loose threads in his clothes, and imagined how he would tell the tale of this night.

Hawke would want to be a warrior, probably.  Tried to be, even, up until the end.  Varric would have to bother the elf for a more thorough translation of what was said before the duel.  The Arishok would say something menacing, probably, before he died.  Some last threat or declaration, some noble end to his reign of terror.

And Hawke would still be standing at the end, of course.  She'd sheath her weapon with that flourish she'd borrowed from the Knight-Commander, and she'd turn and see, with eyes that glowed only the normal amount, the crowds that cheered her, the Knight-Commander and her men bursting through the door, awed by her success, brought to their knees by what this one woman could do where everyone else had failed.

"Lie _still_."

"Varric?"

Varric was so stunned to hear his name that he didn't answer right away, just kind of...shuffled over into her field of vision.  "Yeah?" he managed.

Hawke's eyes were bleary and clouded now, and she focused on him with no small amount of surprise.  "I'm sorry I yelled at you," Hawke breathed.  "And broke your things.  And pushed you down the stairs.  And for basically every interaction we've—" she ran out of breath, inhaled sharply "—ever had, while I'm at it."

"Aw, come on," said Varric, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly.  "We've had plenty of interactions where I didn't completely hate you."

This earned him a weak smile.  "Name one.  Bonus: my clothes had to stay on the whole time."

Above her, Anders balked, schooled his expression into neutrality, and continued his work on her abdomen.

"You did hold my hair when I puked, that one time."

Hawke let out a breathless chuckle.  "And I stand corrected: your hair is actually perfectly acceptable to the touch."

"You're too kind."

Her smile faltered, and she averted her eyes.  "Anyway," she said slowly, "thanks for...you know.  Being here, while I bleed out."

"You would be much less likely to bleed out," said Anders crisply, "if you would _shut up and let me work_."

"Sorry, Blondie," said Varric, holding his hands up in defeat.  "I'll leave you to your demon magic."

"Don't be silly, Anders!" said Hawke.  "What would I do without my trusty dwarf?  Why, I'd cry myself to sleep, I think."

"Shit, Hawke, you already do that," said Varric, without thinking it through, but before dread could fully settle itself in the pit of his stomach, Hawke threw back her head and _laughed_ , loud and full and real. 

"Enough!"  Anders sent Varric rather forcefully in the direction of the door, and proceeded to bitch at Hawke so severely that she actually deigned to listen.

Before either of them complied, though, Hawke shot Varric a genuine smile, and the faintest sparkle of life back in her too-blue eyes assured him that, somehow, impossibly, she would survive this.

There were things in Varric's life he wished he could remember better, and things so gruesome he knew he could never forget them.  If he could, he thought in that moment, he would replace the memory of Hawke carving a glyph into her arm with this one, Hawke alive and well and smiling.

Maker.  How he wished he could.


	3. Lawful, Right, and Necessary

Sometimes when Hawke woke first thing in the morning, when she had managed to sleep at all, she forgot where she was.  Who she was.

She half-expected to hear the sounds of the farm back in Lothering—Mother complaining to no one while she cleaned the house, Beth and Carver grousing amongst themselves as they went about their morning chores, Father singing off-key as he made breakfast.

She'd forgotten things about him over time.  She didn't remember the shape of his ears or whether his eyes had been blue like hers.  She didn't remember what the breakfast he made tasted like or whether he had loved or hated the mabari who had imprinted on his eldest daughter.  But she remembered his singing first thing in the morning like it was yesterday.  Like it was now.  Like it had never stopped.

The memory of her mother's loss felt hollow this morning.  A small comfort.  The memory of the wound in her abdomen came back to her only when she endeavoured to sit up in the darkness, and bit back a hiss of pain as she collapsed back into her pillows.  Anders would come by to check on her later, probably, all stone-faced and humourless and looking like he was ready at any moment to rant about the plight of mages.

And sure, yes, objectively, Hawke could see that it was bad, and getting worse, but death already seemed to follow her like an old friend—she wasn't trying to beckon it any closer with talk of martyrdom.  And he could fuck right off the nearest cliffside if he thought she would ever in a million years let herself end up like Bethany.

Hawke slid off the bed gingerly, struggled not to aggravate the wound that took up the better part of the middle of her body, struggled to push fractured images of the way she'd acquired it from her mind, and made her way gradually down the stairs into the house she now occupied more or less by herself, but for the few servants she didn't need or want but had somehow managed to acquire anyway.

"Good morning, mistress," Orana greeted her, proffering a tray of food.  She thought it might be what Father used to make, that Mother had asked Orana to do it each morning.  She wasn't certain she could stomach it just now.

"Not hungry," she said, in a voice that seemed to have gone permanently hoarse.  "Sorry.  You can have it," she amended curtly.  Orana was one of those people who always looked a bit like a kicked puppy.  Hawke hated to snap at her.

"Of course, mistress."  Orana disappeared like a shadow, like she'd never even been there to begin with.  Hawke briefly entertained the notion that she was hallucinating.

"Good morning, Messere," said Bodahn cheerfully as she rounded the corner.  "Some letters for you on the desk."

Mother had taken him and his son in when they'd gotten the house back.  Hawke had balked at the notion—she hadn't wanted any favours out of finding Sandal, and anyway, he was handling himself just fine down there in the Deep Roads when Hawke had more or less just stumbled onto him and pointed him back to camp.

But the matter was _already dealt with_ , her mother had said, _they need a place to go_ , she said, _they want to help you_ , she said.  The memory of it felt sour in Hawke's stomach now, and she had to steady herself against the writing desk in question until the room stopped spinning.

"Thanks, Bodahn," she managed, though what she wanted most to say was _can't you be somewhere else today, Bodahn?_

Condolences.  Congratulations.  Some junk mail.  A few requests for aid.  More condolences.

Hawke's memory of her battle with the Arishok was fuzzy at best, and what Aveline and Varric had told her made little sense.  Somehow she'd managed to kill him, which had somehow solved the qunari conflict once and for all, and then the Knight-Commander had come bursting through the doors and named her the Champion of Kirkwall, whatever that was supposed to mean.

At the moment what it seemed to mean was a lot of unnecessary mail.  Hawke tore every last letter to shreds, indiscriminately.  She tossed them up into the air and let the pieces drizzle down like snow.  It didn't snow properly in Kirkwall.  It didn't do much of anything pretty in Kirkwall.

Aveline came by to check on her, regarded the mess around her with muted distaste.

"Hawke.."

"I'm _fine,_ Aveline."

Aveline hesitated, settled upon, "Right."

Silence reigned heavy between them.  Hawke watched Aveline eye the mess around her like it was a personal affront, watched the toe of her boot move surreptitiously to clear a path for herself among the bits of shredded letters.  Vaguely, Hawke realized she should say something, but could think of nothing to say, could not bring herself to muster the energy.

Mother would be positively horrified at her manners.

A horrible sob rent itself from Hawke's lungs unbidden, and Hawke collapsed in on herself.  Mother wouldn't be horrified because she wasn't anything anymore.  Mother would never reprimand her, never make another plea for something Hawke didn't know how to provide, never praise her in one breath and condemn her in the next, ever again, because Mother was gone.

She felt Aveline approach, kneel beside her on the floor, and wrap an arm about her shoulders.  Every fibre of her being wanted to twist away from the heaviness of it, but the force of her weeping had aggravated her wound, and now she wasn't certain she could move at all, wasn't certain she'd ever move again once these senseless tears had left her.

"I'm going to tell you a story," said Aveline, as gently as she ever said anything.  "I don't remember my mother, but my father taught me everything he knew.  Spent all he had to get me into Cailan's service.  I think I used to resent him a little for it, you know, grooming me for a dream he'd had to give up."

She sat, somewhat awkwardly, on the floor next to Hawke.  It was weird seeing Aveline in civilian clothes, Hawke realized suddenly, and that thought at least distracted her enough for the worst of the sobbing to subside.  She scrubbed a sleeve across her face, refocused her attention on the dying fire.

"But you know what I remember, now that all's said and done?" Aveline continued.  "When I was a little girl, he used to read to me.  Stupid things.  Dragons and heroes.  And no matter what, he would stop and wait at the end of every page until I reached over and turned it for him.  It was like..." Aveline's voice broke, subtly, and Hawke might not have even heard it if she weren't right next to her.

"It was like that big man was making every step of the story my choice," Aveline finished at last, quieter.  "He died of the Wasting in Denerim.  Those last few weeks, I read to him, and I had to take his hand to turn the pages.  I was never sure whether it was the old game, or he was just too weak, but..."

Aveline's hand, heavy on her knee this time.  "What I'm trying to say...I know you and your mother didn't exactly get along.  But all the things that seemed to matter so much before...they'll fade, with time.  And maybe you'll be able to remember the good things a little better."

Hawke inhaled deeply, a painful, shuddering sort of thing, and she leaned her head on Aveline's shoulder.  She didn't speak.  She didn't trust herself not to say something stupid or hurtful without even trying.  But Aveline had never needed words.

Sometime around noon, she patted Hawke's shoulder and made to remove herself from the floor.

"Sorry about the mess," said Hawke, flatly.

Aveline shook her head, patted Hawke's shoulder again.  "No one tells you how to mourn, Hawke.  Someone tries to tell you what to do?  You take their hand, and say, 'my choice.'"

Merrill came by sometime in the afternoon.  Mercifully she made no attempt to offer condolences—Merrill was another person Hawke preferred to avoid snapping at, and at the moment she seemed to have no middle ground between numbness and all-encompassing rage.  But Merril just took the spot previously occupied by Aveline, among the unmoved wreckage of Hawke's mail, and told her stories about the Dalish legends of the old gods whose names she so often invoked.

Hawke entertained the thought that Varric might come by, but that was sentimental nonsense at its finest.  Varric never came by.  If Hawke wanted to see Varric, she had to go to him.

Isabela didn't come by.  Isabela would never come by again.  Isabela was gone.  Isabela might as well be dead, as dead as Mother and Father and Carver and...

Anders came by sometime in the evening.  Whimsically, she imagined how it must look, when in reality she'd never thought to question it—Anders kept strange hours.  She doubted he slept much at all. 

"How are you feeling?" he asked her.

She shrugged.  "Been better.  Been worse, I would assume."

He nodded.  "Right then, let's have a look."

"Oh, Anders, how will I ever resist your charms?"

No response.  Possibly a further furrowing of the brow.  Hawke sighed, waved her hands as if to say _at your leisure,_ and allowed him to lift her tunic.

"It's looking better, actually," said Anders, sounding quite surprised of it.  "You're lucky."

Hawke almost laughed, but even the impulse stung a little.  "No one has ever called me lucky before.  Uncannily unlucky, maybe."

Anders set about working his weird healing magic.  It burned bright and cold and yellow, like nothing Hawke had ever witnessed before.  "You almost die in the Deep Roads, but end up a wealthy reinstated noble.  You are a mage, a lifelong apostate, yet the Knight-Commander, who is notorious for despising magic, not only ignores it, but names you a champion of her city."

"Yes, I can't see any way that could turn around to bite me in the ass," said Hawke drily.

"It's unprecedented, Hawke," Anders pressed, in that tone that indicated Hawke was about to start wanting to punch him in the face.  "Surely you realize that."

Hawke sighed heavily, only bothered to watch her words at all because he had his magic buried in her entrails.  "Listen, Anders, I haven't really had the wherewithal to wonder why the Knight-Commander hasn't come for my head on a platter yet.  At the moment I'm taking it as a small miracle."

The cool healing energy faded nonetheless, and Anders squared his shoulders.  "You've got some nerve," he murmured, low and dangerous.

Hawke felt irritation building inside her, struggled to swallow it down.

"Can you not see how your position could help people?  You are not a Circle mage, and never have been.  You don't know what it's like to look back, to see only sleepwalkers, fragments of people who don't know how to function!  Orsino tries, but what good can he really do?  Meredith will never see him as an equal, never even as a complete person, because he's not—we're not, in the Circle, we're—it's a half life, Hawke!"

Hawke struggled to right herself, struggled to move slowly, not to twist or contract.  "Easy, Anders," she warned.

"Easy!"  Anders was starting to shake all over.  "Easy, that's what you want, isn't it!  You want to hide away in your big house with your...with your glorified slaves, to live off their gratitude to you—to live off of everyone's gratitude to you for swinging a sword around, for having the—the decency to hide what you truly are!"

Hawke made it to her feet, squared her own shoulders and set her jaw in response.  "That's enough," she said, as firmly as she could manage when she felt she might lose consciousness.

Anders backed away slowly, a faint glow about his eyes, and a terrible tremor in his hand as he pointed at the wound he'd just dressed.  "Mark my words, Hawke," he said, in a voice not quite his own, "this will all go south faster than you can imagine.  The time will come for you to take a side."

She all but chased him out the front door, and slammed it behind him.  She closed all the doors in the house.  She locked them, once, twice, three times, she shoved chairs and dressers and tables in front of them to keep them closed.  She drew all the curtains, threw water on the fire, blew out all the lamps and candles but for the one she carried to light her way back to bed, and then she blew that one out, too.

Darkness.  Stillness.  Nothingness at long last.

* * *

Despair had found her this evening.  The Fade was uncommonly cold, and greyer than usual, and every shadow that caught her eye turned out to be just as familiar as she desperately hoped it wasn't.

_Maybe the templars are right, after all.  Lock up all the mages and throw away the key._

"Me, too, Uncle?" she heard herself saying.

_I don't know.  You'd have been better off if you were like Carver._

"What?" she lifted her chin defiantly.  "Dead?"

The vision of Gamlen stormed off into nothingness the way he had in real life.  _I wish you hadn't told me_ , he'd screamed at her, but if the vision of Leandra's face on a nightmare's body was to haunt her for the rest of her days, the least Gamlen could do was to share a fraction of her burden.

_Gamlen wants it easy, too._

"Shut up, Anders.  I won't feel badly about punching a demon who looks like you."

 _You two are so much alike_.

Hawke turned on the vision of Anders.  "Do you not understand the meaning of _shut up?"_

_You hide yourselves away, build walls upon walls around yourselves, and when things get too real, you just...disappear._

Hawke punched him.  He dissolved into nothingness.

She awoke with a start, breathing heavily, sure she'd heard something.  All the doors were locked, but Fenris always came in through the window.

Some pain numbed over time, or by days, at least.  This one hadn't yet.  Every time she saw him it was another twist of the knife.  "Go away," she said into the darkness, and turned onto her other side to face away from his silhouette.  It hurt more to lie facing this way, but she'd take physical pain over the pain in her heart any day of the week.

She heard him shuffle heavily in the darkness before he found and lit one of the lamps on the wall.  "No one has seen you in many days," he said.  "I was...concerned."

Hawke scoffed.  "So you're allowed to wallow away in your abandoned mansion, but I'm not?"

"You have people who care for you to tell you to stop," Fenris replied evenly.

"Everyone who ever cared for me is gone," Hawke spat, pulling her knees up to her chest.  It hurt more, aggravated the axe wound, but it also felt safer to be curled up.  As safe as Hawke ever felt, anyway.

"That isn't true," said Fenris, daring an approach.

There was a part of her that wanted, desperately wanted, to allow him to reach her, but she had no idea where to begin.  A person should be able to reach another simply by means of the physical act, right?  Maybe if she just didn't move, maybe if she let him approach...

Fenris's feet came into view against the deep red rug beneath her bed.  He knelt until his face came into view, and his hand landed warm and rough against her shoulder.

She shuddered violently, and the wound in her abdomen flared up like hell.  Though she wanted nothing more than to collapse into him, to allow herself to be comforted, she could not abide it.  She thrashed onto her other side again, fought against hot tears that threatened to well up in her eyes, wasn't sure if her body was just crying because she hurt so badly or if she was crying because of all the things she wanted but could never even begin to grasp at.

"Why are you here?" she demanded to the opposing wall.

"I told you already."

"You were _concerned_ ," she echoed thinly.

She wasn't even certain what she was trying to say.  Concerned.  A strange word.  Stilted and formal.  Maybe he'd been concerned, too, the night he'd sprung from her bed as though burned, backed away slowly and measured his words even as she shouted at him, apologized even though she was the one being terrible.

A person should be able to reach another by touching them, right?

Hawke wiped haphazardly at her face, turned herself around so she could look at him again.  His hand remained aloft, his expression stormy.

"Why now?" she nearly pleaded.  "Because you think I need you?"

"No."  Fenris lowered his eyes.  "Because I thought you might...want me."

And she knew she did, still, somewhere, buried underneath the hurt and the fear and the isolation and the ever-growing numbness that threatened to paralyze even these few remaining emotions.  She thought of the way he'd chuckled awkwardly and ducked his head when she complimented him, the way he'd bristled at the idea that Hawke might take Orana for a slave, seemed almost to collapse into himself when she'd indicated she meant to help.  She thought of the look in his eyes and the set of his jaw when he'd offered his suggestion, that Hawke might duel the Arishok, and how he seemed to genuinely believe that this would be no trouble for her, had not even considered how close to death she would come. 

But then she thought of the horror in his eyes afterward, in those icy moments when the world was going in and out of focus, and how she didn't know whether it was because of the blood gushing from her abdomen or from the symbols etched into the skin of her arm, because he felt responsible or because he felt betrayed.

She didn't know which she wanted to believe.  She didn't know which hurt worse, now that he was here, attempting to comfort her in spite of her betrayal or because of his guilt.

"Thought you'd rather die than endure the touch of a blood mage," she said at last, low and harsh, and it was enough to make him flinch.

"You call yourself a blood mage with such confidence?" Fenris breathed. 

There was that edge to his voice, the one she'd been courting all along, and the one he'd likely been holding back because she was still lying here half-dead.  She needed him to snap at her so she could stop feeling so badly about breaking his heart a hundred different ways.

"One time is all it takes, isn't it?" Hawke challenged.

"You...would have..."

Hawke's lip curled.  "So you'll, what?  Overlook it?  Just this once?"

Fenris's mouth hung open, at a loss.

"What about the next time?" she challenged, as much as someone could from the fetal position.

"Yes, fine!" he stood at last.  "I was willing to overlook it.  Because you would have died.  Because I have always seen you use your magic as a last resort, and that moment seemed no different to me.  Because I—"  But his words fell short, as though the air had been rent from his lungs.

"What?" Hawke propped herself up in spite of the pain that shot through her, in spite of the way her vision spun and her stomach lurched.  "Because you care for me?"

"Yes!" Fenris threw up his hands, a twitchy gesture, and he wasn't quite meeting her eyes again.

Hawke couldn't stand to look at him anymore.  She collapsed back into her pillows, closed her eyes against the sight.  "Get out of here, Fenris," she said.  "I don't need your pity."

She heard a hesitation, a shuddering breath, a hard swallow, and then footsteps.  A shadow fell across her face before she heard Fenris exit the way he had arrived.

* * *

_You're a beautiful woman, Hawke.  Is there no one else who has your attention?_

"I didn't quite catch that first bit," she heard herself saying.

_I'm certain I don't need to repeat the obvious._

Warmth.  The flicker of a fireplace, the soothing burn of old wine and dark eyes studying her, someone untouchable daring to draw a step nearer.

 _You could take me back_.

Hawke faltered.  "I'm not sure I deserve to."

 _I still want you_.  He approached, closer, too close, warm skin and cool metal gauntlets against her cheek.  _It's why I came to be with you.  I left because I was afraid_.  So close now, warm breath upon her lips and electricity upon her skin.  _I would come back, if only you would wait._

It took every shattered fragment of control Hawke had ever possessed to pull away.  Sometimes Desire could be so much easier to give into than Despair.

She woke in tears, shivering from a cold that had little to do with the room and everything to do with its utter emptiness.

* * *

Hawke pushed up her sleeve to scratch at the bandage covering the glyph from the Arishok battle.  It hadn't quite stopped glowing—even the bandage was glowing a little—and as it began to heal, it began to _itch_.

"Can't you get Blondie to clean that thing?" Varric wondered.

Under different circumstances the comment would have irritated her, but Hawke was uncommonly glad to be in Varric's company again.  It was a relief beyond measure to be able to leave the house without fear of doing something horribly embarrassing like fainting or bleeding to death, but she imagined her haphazard healing process was far from over.

Hawke laughed, then drained the last of the first beer she'd been (technically) permitted to have in months.  "Yes, hello, can you please give me some antiseptic for this ancient glyph of doom and destruction?"

"Five silver it gets infected and kills you."

"If it gets infected and kills me you can raid my house for all the silver you want."

Varric shrugged, nursed his own ale.  "Fine, leave it be, then."

"The depth of your concern is—" Hawke faltered, just for an instant, at the sight of the Knight-Commander as she entered the Hanged Man, "...touching."

Not unlike with Aveline, seeing Knight-Commander Meredith without all her glittering armour was uniquely unsettling.  Still a striking figure, but in a wholly different fashion.  It was no wonder no one else had taken note of her presence yet. 

Hawke hadn't seen the Knight-Commander, as far as she remembered, since she'd sent Hawke ahead of her into the Keep, promising to hold off approaching forces while Hawke tried to reason with the Arishok. According to a strange combination of accounts received from Varric and Aveline, Meredith had stormed into the Keep around the time Hawke had collapsed before her kill, and had announced to the room that Kirkwall had a new Champion, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Since the Viscount's head had been so casually tossed across the floor of his keep, and the head of his only son was in no better condition, Hawke was given to understand, extremely vaguely, that the political situation in Kirkwall was its own very boring disaster.  In a highly-contested effort to allay the chaos, Meredith had declared martial law and was taking on the Viscount's duties, herself, much to the chagrin of almost everyone.  Those with noble ties called her power-hungry, those with mage sympathies thought her a tyrant, those with criminal ties found her rule highly inconvenient to their work, and those with no specific complaint seemed generally to simply dislike her.

Hawke, who tried very hard to keep her head out of politics, could not help but to admire a woman who looked out over a sea of faces contorted with hatred and fear, and said, _fuck all of you, I'll do what needs to be done_.

In the present, the Knight-Commander in civilian clothes met Hawke's eyes coolly as she approached.  Hawke could almost feel Varric tense up next to her when at last he recognized her.  Hawke, by contrast, relaxed.  She hadn't survived twenty-eight years as an apostate by looking like she was up to something whenever she spotted a templar, and she meant to give Varric hell for doing just that at the earliest opportunity.

"Why, Knight-Commander," she said, leaning back into her chair and draping an arm over the next.  "What an unexpected pleasure."

Meredith considered them both skeptically.  "Serah Hawke," she greeted Hawke with a nod.  "I had hoped to find you here, else I think I'd have had to send for you.  You've made yourself scarce these past few months."

Were Hawke less schooled in the art of dissemblance, she might have balked at that. No indication that she had realized the depth of Hawke's injuries, no indication that she had even heard about the death of Leandra Amell.  It was jarring, to be certain, but also strangely refreshing to see no pity in her eyes.

"Personal matters," said Hawke pleasantly.  "I'd regale you with the details, but I expect they would bore you terribly.  They bore me terribly, actually, and I had to deal with them."

Meredith narrowed her eyes studiously, but did not pry further.  "I have yet to thank you personally for your victory against the Arishok," she said, with another small nod of her head, like something that wasn't quite a bow.  "A title is a poor reward for your services.  Would that I could give you what you deserve.  Still, I hope you are aware that the people of this city truly consider you their champion."

Hawke shrugged, bowed her own head in a show of deference.  "Oh, you know, just...trying not to die.  Would you...care to join us?" she gestured to the empty seat, felt Varric's foot against hers under the table.

"I would," said Meredith, with the kind of evenness that indicated she'd never had any intention of leaving.

Hawke affected a small smile.  "Not here on business, I hope."

Meredith's brow furrowed.  "I'm...afraid so," she said, and seemed somewhat vexed to be saying it.

"Can't be helped, I'm sure."  Hawke poked Varric's arm.  She was half-ready for him to flinch, or even strike back, the way he was all wound up.  "Varric, go and tell Corff he's got an honoured guest in his esteemed establishment."

"Oh, I'll tell him, all right," Varric murmured as he made a hasty departure.

"Your friend is...cagey," Meredith remarked.

"Oh, don't mind him," said Hawke with a dismissive wave of her hand.  "You know how it is, I'm sure.  Some people always look a bit like they've got their hands in the cookie jar."

Meredith arched one eyebrow, so subtly it barely changed her expression at all.  "Often because they do."

Hawke's affected smile returned, sharper.  "Perhaps you're right," she said airily.  "Anyway, on to business: whatever would cause the Knight-Commander, herself, to go looking for little old me?  I'm sure your thanks for my heroic deeds could have been confined to a letter."

Maybe they were, for all Hawke knew.  She hadn't quite stopped ripping up her mail indiscriminately.  Bodahn had recently taken it upon himself to sort it for her.

"Little old you," Meredith echoed derisively.  She did not frown, but her face hardened somehow, a kind of armour in itself.  "The Guard-Captain implied you had little understanding of your influence in Kirkwall, even before you managed to end what seemed an impossible conflict in a single battle.  Personally," she inclined her head subtly, "I wonder whether you refuse to acknowledge it within your own mind, or whether you merely put on a very charming act."

Hawke raised an eyebrow, and for a moment her smile became real.  "Charming, did you say?"

The Knight-Commander's eyes narrowed, but she neither confirmed nor denied.

"On the house!" Varric returned with a flourish, slamming three ales down on the table between them.

"I knew Corff would see reason," said Hawke lightly as she claimed a mug for herself and toasted it in the direction of the bartender.

Meredith eyed the drinks, Varric, and Hawke, each in turn, with the utmost suspicion.  "Champion," she said at last, with a sternness that sounded like a reprimand.  "I'm given to understand you have a flair for...vigilantism."

Hawke took a long sip of her beer while she wrapped her head around that statement.  She shot Varric a sidelong glance.  "I...suppose someone could frame it that way, if he really worked at it," she said pointedly.  No telling what stories he was spinning while she was busy writhing in pain for months on end.  Sometimes she longed for the days when she and Varric had barely tolerated one another—at least then he hadn't talked to other people about her if he could help it.

Varric, for his part, still looked more than a little spooked by the Knight-Commander's general presence.  He muttered something about artistic license into his beer.

Hawke inhaled deeply, returned her attention to Meredith.  "Well, it doesn't sound like you intend to haul me in, but...you're sort of..." she waved her free hand vaguely, "in charge, aren't you?  Not that it's not an honour, Knight-Commander, but apart from that one unfortunate qunari incident, I usually deal in matters the acting head of a city-state couldn't be bothered with."

She remarked again how different Meredith looked out of her bulky armour, and wondered if it was some kind of play, as though Hawke could ever for a second forget what she was.  When Hawke had first laid eyes on her, she looked like some kind of vengeful archangel descended from the heavens to set the world aflame.  Now, in a simple tunic and long skirt, hair still covered like a particularly devout Chantry sister, she crossed her arms and rounded her broad shoulders slightly, like she was awkward in her own skin.

"In light of that 'unfortunate incident', your station in this city has risen considerably these last few months, _Champion,_ " said Meredith.  "Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, you hold much influence over the people of Kirkwall.  I am asking you to look into a few matters for me in the hopes of granting you perspective."

 _'Trying to teach you a lesson' sounds the same no matter how you dress it up_ , Hawke almost retorted, but schooled her expression into neutrality.  "All right then," she said, "let's hear it."

Meredith told her of an incident in the Gallows.  Something-something, terrifying templar words, mages escaped.  Hawke sipped her ale as she listened and did a commendable job of ignoring the way panic crept ice-cold through her veins.

"You want me to hunt down escaped mages," Hawke echoed when Meredith had finished speaking, with an incredulity muted only by a cosmic sort of amusement.  "Have all the templars just suddenly disappeared, then?"

The tiniest of smiles graced Meredith's features, and the change, far more than Meredith's casual dress, threw Hawke somewhat off her guard.  It was a wry expression, and she shook her head as though in good-natured exasperation.  "I am attempting," she said slowly, "to solve a difficult problem in a gentler manner than that of which I am most capable.  Could my templars storm the streets?  Bang down the doors of the families who shelter the fugitives?  Obtain answers by any means necessary?"  She leveled a steely gaze upon Hawke.  "Of course.  But would that be wise?"

Meredith's demeanour shifted again.  She leaned in slightly, expression gone stony once more, and she almost seemed to loom over Hawke even though she was sitting.  "You are not a templar.  Indeed, you are not I.  As I've already said, the people of Kirkwall view you as their champion.  They trust you.  The fugitives' families might speak with you, where they would be reluctant to speak to us."

Hawke took a long sip of her beer, slammed it down on the table with gusto, and nodded her assent.  _Fine_ , she thought.  Her despair knew no limits these days, it seemed, so sure, why not?  Marian Hawke the mage-hunter it was.  What would Father think of her now?

* * *

Bethany was crying.  Just seeing her—just seeing the vision of her, Hawke reminded herself sternly—was like a punch to the gut, and Hawke had to clench her fists at her sides to avoid running over to her on mere instinct.

The vision of Bethany turned wide eyes upon Hawke.

_Don't let them take me!_

"Never," Hawke whispered.  "Never in a million..."

The templars came together out of smoke and ash to grab her by the arms and drag her away.

_Marian!  Marian!_

The fog enveloped her, and Hawke fell to her knees.

_But that's not how it happened, is it?_

Meredith's voice.  Colder than it was in real life.  More calculating.  More like what Hawke expected her to be than like what she was.

_Your sister turned herself into the templars.  She put the needs of others over her own fears._

Bethany reappeared behind Meredith, hands clasped, head bowed in submission.

_Bethany was always such a good girl._

Now the voice was starting to change, and the face with it.

_You'd have been better off if you were like Bethany.  You'd have been much better off if you were normal like Carver._

It was Leandra now.  Leandra as she had been before, elegant silver hair falling in perfect ringlets about her face, and eyes like a mirror.

_But if you had to be a mage, why couldn't you be one who understood what a burden you place on others?  Why couldn't you accept your curse and show a little humility?  Why couldn't you just turn yourself in like a good girl?  Then you'd be better off._

_Better off like Bethany, much better off like Carver_.

"Then I'd be dead.  Worse."

 _Then you'd be at peace_.

Hawke woke to the grey light of morning, shivering violently.  Someone was rapping on her door.

"...Champion is asleep at the moment," she heard Bodahn saying from the stairs, "and I would not wake her, serah.  She gets so little rest as it is, and I—"

Hawke peeked around the doorframe to look into the foyer.  Maxine barked happily, and the frantic eyes of her early morning intruder found her instantly.  "Messere!  Messere, I'm sorry to bother you, but there's trouble in the square just outside.  I hoped perhaps you could...stand at the ready, in case something goes wrong."

Now that she focused, she could hear someone yelling, some murmurs of dissent as though from a crowd.  She squeezed her eyes closed and inhaled deeply.  "Right.  Sure.  Let me just get my things."

"Shall I help you with your armour, Messere?" Bodahn wondered.

"No, it's..."  Once more, she caught sight of the strange, frantic look in the eyes of the man at the door.  "Yes, sure.  Thanks."

As the garish visions of her dead family faded from the forefront of her mind, Hawke was confronted with how physically exhausted she felt.  The ache in her muscles, at least, was welcome, a sign of a few hard days' work after what had seemed an eternity being forced to rest.  The circumstances of her efforts, however, let alone what lay ahead of her, were less than ideal.

She'd spent the last few days wallowing in Kirkwall's esteemed sewers, quite literally at times, chasing down Meredith's stupid blood mages.  Well, not all of them turned out to be blood mages.  One of them was just profoundly stupid.  Anders had had a few choice words to say on the matter, and Hawke was sure he'd have liked to let Emile de Launcet go, but Hawke couldn't abide it.  The man was a disaster—he'd be dead or recaptured within the week, and then the consequences of not bringing him in earlier might fall upon Hawke's own head, rather than Emile's.

Hawke had not yet acquired the wherewithal to wonder why the Knight-Commander hadn't come after her.  She would give her no clear reason, so long as she could help it.

The First Enchanter of Kirkwall's Circle was a kind-eyed elf named Orsino.  Though Hawke had heard that he and the Knight-Commander got into terrible arguments, she had never witnessed him so much as raise his voice.  To see him set up on a platform in the market, preaching resistance against Meredith's harsh treatment of mages, was a stark contrast to the image of him she'd had in her mind.

Before Hawke had even fully wrapped her head around this, however, the Knight-Commander in question came bursting onto the scene, once more the fearsome archangel, and demanded that Orsino desist, or be arrested. 

Hawke felt as though these images before her might dissolve into smoke at the slightest provocation.  She saw Meredith with a face contorted in rage and Meredith hiding a smile and she found it somehow impossible to reconcile the two.

"Perhaps some would disagree with you, Knight-Commander," Orsino was saying, and he was looking at her.

"The Champion has proven herself Kirkwall's greatest defender," Meredith replied coolly.  "I doubt that she favours sedition."

Kind hazel eyes and steely blue ones, both affixed upon Hawke.

Hawke was no mediator, no great beacon of wisdom and levelheadedness.  Even before her life had turned to utter shit, she'd never been particularly skilled at solving conflicts that didn't involve weaponry.  But she remembered what Meredith had said to her—that whether she liked it or not, the people of Kirkwall were watching her—and this awakened in her, very briefly, a feeling she hadn't known since her siblings were alive: the deep-seated desire not to let anyone down.

So, she gritted her teeth, and she tried. 

"How about...you both calm down?" she began, as gently as her voice would manage, though she imagined the overall effect was strained.

Meredith's expression hardened, and her lip curled.  "I should remain calm, while a mage provokes an uprising?  I think not."

Hawke was ready to retreat, to say she had tried her best, but Orsino persisted, with wide, fearful eyes practically begging her for help.  "I think the Champion's views would be appreciated," he said, and in his voice she heard Anders begging her to use her influence to help people.  She wondered if Orsino knew.  She wondered what he had seen, and felt the familiar chill of approaching panic.

But Meredith was speaking to her now, a different kind of plea behind her steely gaze.  "—agree with the First Enchanter's accusations, Champion?"

"I..." her eyes darted between the two of them, tried not to see the dozens of other eyes trained upon her, tried not to draw wild conclusions regarding who had seen her use magic and how afraid of her they were.  At last her gaze fell to Orsino.  "What are you trying to do here?" she asked him quietly.

"The people deserve to know the truth about her, Champion," said Orsino, loud enough for the crowd to hear.  "They deserve to know what goes on in the Circle, that she is trying to use fear of mages to control them—"

"And then what?" Meredith challenged, quietly.  "They tear down the Gallows with pitchforks and torches?  That would be better?"

Hawke was utterly out of her depth, and only digging herself in deeper.  She could see very few outcomes here: either she took a side, or she somehow managed not to for a few days longer, and what choice did she really have, in the end?  If Hawke supported the mages with so many obvious examples of real danger cropping up among them, she risked incurring Meredith's ire, and outing herself as an apostate.  She rather doubted the city would see her as their champion then.

On the other hand, if she supported the templars, in what exactly was she to be complicit?  She'd heard the rumours, of course.  Indeed, for someone with little stake in the issues Meredith influenced, Varric was one of her greatest (and most vulgar) critics.  Aveline was more respectful by far, but even she had expressed doubts regarding Meredith's 'methods', whatever that meant.  In any tavern of low enough repute one could hear at least three tables arguing about whether Meredith was the best thing to happen to Kirkwall or the worst.

And she supposed in a distant sort of way she could see what people were whispering about—the stringent immigration practices that kept people less crafty than she in Darktown or worse, the harsher and harsher restrictions on imported goods, the way she treated the First Enchanter like he was beneath her, the way the Circle was said to be run—but as far as Hawke was concerned, garden-variety mage hatred was standard fare, and after Hawke's time rolling around in the seedy underbelly of the city, she wasn't so sure cracking down so harshly on the smuggling business was the worst thing that could happen to Kirkwall.

The fact was that whether or not Meredith was a good templar did not personally affect Hawke's day to day life, and Hawke hoped to keep it that way for as long as she was able.  The fact was that whether or not Orsino's life sucked, or whether or not the life of the idiot mage she'd been sent to track down sucked, was none of Hawke's business, and if she played her cards right, she could keep it that way.

If Hawke told herself that this was true long enough, and often enough, perhaps eventually it would cease to nauseate her.  "Not to...belabour a point, First Enchanter, but there are an awful lot of rogue mages in Kirkwall, aren't there?"

Whether she'd helped or hurt—or, more probably, whether she'd hurt a little or a lot, remained to be seen.  What lay before her today was another trip to the damned Gallows, an apostate trotting into the office of the Knight-Commander to deliver a report on other apostates like the snake she was.  For such an undertaking, she had chosen as wisely as she could.  Tonight's round of nightmares would serve her right, she imagined.

* * *

Hawke avoided the Gallows altogether when she could, for obvious reasons, but even she could see the place looked a bit worse for wear since last she'd set foot here.  She remembered a fight she'd had with Fenris, what felt like a lifetime ago, when he'd been accompanying her on some stupid errand or another and seen fit to go off about the dangers of magic like he wasn't following blindly after a lifelong apostate, like he didn't know about Bethany.

Then again, maybe he hadn't known at the time.  Maybe he'd only just learned in the course of their fight, and she'd just irrationally expected him to piece together the information from the vague fragments she'd offered.

She ducked her head, as though hiding her face would hide the familiarity of her form.  She wondered, not for the first time, what Meredith was playing at.  Weren't templars supposed to be able to spot the signs of magical ability a mile away?  Wasn't Meredith the one who snapped _I refuse to play games_ when they'd gone after the Arishok, when lives she actually cared about had been at stake?

What was Hawke to Meredith?  Did she truly not know?  What could possibly be her reason for feigning ignorance?

Just setting foot in Templar Hall make Hawke itch all over, but she received no more than a few curious glances as she entered.  Hawke found Meredith's door ajar, and her office empty.  The feeling of dread settling itself into her stomach intensified, and she was rather glad she'd brought Aveline with her.  Rather glad of everything Aveline was at the moment, from a respectable Guard-Captain to a rock-solid ally, even when Hawke had so seldom been able to return the favour.

Hawke wandered down the hall hesitantly, fully expecting a trap to spring at any moment, but there was no sign of Meredith, or indeed, any templar, in the immediate area.  Hawke was just about to offer her companions a shrug and make a hasty exit when a voice came from behind them and stopped her cold in her tracks.

"Greetings, Champion of Kirkwall."

Hawke felt herself flinch.

She turned around slowly, too slowly, hoping that perhaps if she ignored the voice long enough its owner would disappear, and she wouldn't have to see the dead eyes and telltale markings of—

"I am Knight-Commander Meredith's assistant, Elsa," said a woman around her own age, with dirty blonde hair and the mark of the Tranquil upon her forehead.  "The Knight-Commander expects you, but had to attend to her duties within the Gallows.  She asked me to receive you, should you arrive in her absence."

"Why would Meredith keep a Tranquil mage for an assistant?" Varric wondered aloud.

"The Knight-Commander believes Tranquil mages to be efficient and singleminded," Elsa responded mechanically.  "I, in particular, am extremely organized."

"And we didn't even have to talk in circles with Her Majesty," Varric was saying, but the words rang distant in Hawke's ears, like she was falling down a well.  "I'd call that a good day."

Heartless bitch.

"Hawke?"

She had to know.  This had to be a play.  This had to be intentional.

"We can go now, right?  This place makes my teeth itch."

"Serah Hawke."

All of them flinched then.

Hawke turned again to face Meredith, who smiled good-naturedly at the idea of hunting mages, who kept a Tranquil mage under her boot like a pet, like a display in a museum, like a warning, and it took every tattered fragment of self-control Hawke had ever possessed not to spit in her face.

"I am led to believe that both Huan and Evelina are dead," said Meredith, calm as ever.

The evenness in her tone only served to rile Hawke's temper further.  She dug her fingernails into her palms, struggled not to grit her teeth.  "Yes," she said.  "I tried to help them.  They were too far gone already."

Meredith nodded sagely.  Hawke felt bile rise in her throat, was sure she'd be sick on the floor of the Knight-Commander's office.  Her hands trembled with rage at her sides, and she held her breath to keep her surging mana  in check.  What a time it would be to give herself away.

"Unfortunate," she said.  "But necessary.  Emile de Launcet, however, turned himself in.  Rather happily, I might add.  I would have had him executed immediately, but the boy's father made an impassioned appeal on his behalf.  I'd hoped to hear your opinion on the matter."

Hawke dug her nails deeper into her palms, inhaled as slowly as she dared, ignored the way her vision almost blurred from the extent of her rage.  If it were anyone else, anyone else in all of Thedas from a dear friend to the Empress of Orlais, Hawke would have torn her throat out already, consequences be damned.

 _Meredith will never see him as an equal, never even as a complete person_ , Anders had said of the First Enchanter.  The implication had been that she might see Hawke that way, and yet what cards did she truly hold that Orsino did not?  What did apostasy and some intangible political pull grant her, in the Knight-Commander's eyes, that kept her head from the chopping block?

"What say you, Champion?" Meredith pressed, almost gently, as though she saw Hawke's ire, but did not understand the nature of it.  "Do you believe Emile to be dangerous?"

"Dangerous," the word fell from Hawke's lips like a curse.  "He's an idiot.  He was telling people in a tavern he was a blood mage to sound appealing to women.  Lock him up and you'll be fine."

Hawke was sure what happened next would haunt her every day for the rest of her miserable life.  Meredith ducked her head to hide a genuine smile, let out a low, silky chuckle that set every last one of Hawke's nerves on edge.  Hawke felt every sensible thought flee from her mind, leaving her wide-eyed and staring.

She'd said something else.  Was looking at Hawke expectantly.  No longer smiling, but still with a certain lightness about her eyes.

"Right.  Well.  Good day, then, Mere—" Hawke averted her eyes.  "Knight-Commander."

"Good day, Champion," said Meredith, almost warmly.  She afforded Hawke a real bow this time, with a slight bend of the waist and a respectful nod of the head that did not seem affected.

When Meredith's office door had closed behind her, Hawke felt as though she might collapse.  Her companions ushered her out of Templar Hall with considerable haste, but even when they'd made it safely back onto the ferry to Kirkwall, there reigned between them an uneasy silence.

Hawke rested her head in her hands and tried not to show how they trembled.  This was only the beginning.  It had to be.  The killing blow was coming.  Hawke would be bloodied and beaten when it came, but she'd think she still had a chance.  She'd drag herself to her feet, ready herself for one last stand, and only then would Meredith's true intention be revealed.

* * *

Not a week later, Hawke caught sight of Meredith in the Hightown market.  She'd just been passing through on her way to Lowtown, dearly hoping not to be noticed, but that was a pleasure the Champion of Kirkwall was seldom afforded.  Hawke wondered fleetingly whether Meredith had bestowed the title upon her to ensure just such a circumstance.

Failing total anonymity, Hawke dared to hope for a simple nod of acknowledgement, but even this was not to be.  Meredith approached her, and Hawke could do nothing but to stand and wait for whatever fate might befall her.

"Serah Hawke," Meredith greeted her.

"Knight-Commander," Hawke affected a smile, but could think of no pleasantry to offer.  She doubted Meredith would want one.  _So, what's it like having a Tranquil servant?  Do you ever think about how she used to be a person?_

"It has come to my attention that the late Leandra Amell was your mother," said Meredith, and Hawke felt a twinge somewhere in her chest that she tried very hard to ignore.  "I did not know her, but...I am terribly sorry for your loss.  What befell her was..." Meredith's brow furrowed subtly, "...an unspeakable injustice.  I wish I had been able to offer you some assistance."

Hawke swallowed, hard, but her words still came out dry and strained.  "Thank you," she said simply.  "Was...there something else you needed, Knight-Commander?"

Meredith looked as though she very much wished to say more, but hesitated nonetheless.  "The Lady Amell should not have been faced with any difficulties upon reentering the city; however, I am given to understand that she departed under...mysterious circumstances.  The specifics were...unclear to me."

Hawke offered a feeble attempt at a chuckle.  "You hadn't heard the infamous scandal?"

Meredith remained impassive, waiting, watching.  Hawke steadfastly ignored the icy grip of terror.

"She was engaged to be married into some other noble family," Hawke continued, as lightly as she could manage, "but she ran off with a Fereldan apostate."

Meredith was silent for a moment.  "Your father?" she guessed.

The severity of her tone caused Hawke's thin guise of lightheartedness to slip.  "He's dead, too, before you go mounting a search party," she said coolly.

But Meredith did not snap back.  "The intention behind my inquiry was not official.  I am sorry for your loss, Serah Hawke," she said simply, and all the fire left Hawke as quickly as it had come.

"No, no, I'm sorry," she said quietly, like she'd just lashed out at a friend, and ran a hand through her hair.  "I didn't mean to snap.  I thank you for your condolences, Knight-Commander, but unless there was something else, I really must be on my way."

"Of course," said Meredith, with the same small bow.  "I bid you good day, Champion."

Hawke made it all the way around the corner  and down the stairs into Lowtown before she allowed herself to double over in sheer horror at the whole affair.

She covered her mouth to steady her breathing, gripped her side to keep from aggravating her injury, squeezed her eyes closed to shut out the world in hopes that it would go away entirely if she wished it hard enough.

What did Meredith _want_ with her?  What was she playing at?  Could she not see that Hawke was just trying to keep her head down?  Why should someone so relatively ordinary be thrust into the middle of such a conflict?  Why couldn't Meredith just act the way everyone seemed to think she did, and have Hawke executed for apostasy right here and now, no more casual visits in civilian clothes, no more hidden smiles and silky laughter, no more games, no more farcical plays at compassion and friendliness where there could be none?

Hawke had no interest in politics, nor the nobility, nor even in power.  When Father had died, she had been tasked with carving out an existence for her family, and now that they were all gone, her purpose in life was rendered moot.  Now she had a dog and a handful of scruffy half-friends and a fucking political figurehead banging down her door asking oddly specific questions with no end goal in sight.  What use could she possibly be to Meredith?

She wiped furiously at her face before she reentered the streets, tore towards the Hanged Man with renewed vigour, nothing but a bitter ale and perhaps a begrudging listening ear on her mind.  She heard Varric before she saw him, employing his storyteller voice.  She remembered a time when the sound had grated on her nerves like nothing else.  Now she regarded it with a certain fondness.

"—and sure enough, what do we see sitting smack-dab in the middle of the entrance to the Deep Roads, but a real, live, fire-breathing—Hawke!  Excuse me," Varric faltered when he caught sight of Hawke.  "It seems the next installment of this tale will have to wait."

"Don't stop on my account," said Hawke, once the crowd had already cleared.  "What did the fire-breathing Hawke do then?"

"Hopefully she graciously agreed to give the dashing dwarf a hand with some unfinished business?" Varric grinned, and Hawke sighed.  "You all right, Hawke?  So far this one sounds way less boring than killing my crazy brother."

Hawke inhaled, then sighed again.  She waved Edwina down for a drink and then collapsed into one of the many vacant chairs now surrounding Varric.  "Just had another chat with the Knight-Commander," she said.

Varric tensed.  "Did something happen?"

"Dial it back, Tethras," Hawke needled him half-heartedly.  "Every time Meredith's name so much as comes up you act like you're the suddenly famous apostate."  Before Varric could stammer out a defense, she amended, "It was weird, that's all.  She offered me condolences for my mother."

Varric raised his eyebrows.  "Oh?"

"She said she didn't even know Leandra Amell was my mother before.  Like she didn't care before."  Hawke leaned her head against the wall.  "Here I am trying to keep my head down and the fucking Knight-Commander decides to take a personal interest in me.  Figures, doesn't it?"

"You do have uniquely terrible luck," Varric agreed hesitantly.  He looked like he very much wanted to say something else, and Hawke couldn't begin to fathom why he'd be holding back.

"Anders had the nerve to call me lucky not long ago," Hawke scoffed.  "I nearly laughed in his face.  Anyway, what's troubling you now, Tethras?"

"Well," said Varric slowly, "you kinda looked like you were ready to rip Meredith's head off and leave it on her office desk the other day."

Hawke waved a hand dismissively.  "Yes, yes, besides that."

"I'm serious, Hawke—what set you off?" Varric pressed.  "Was it the Tranquil assistant?"

"You're a fucking genius," said Hawke flatly.  "A regular detective."

Varric sighed pointedly.  "The Knight-Commander is a sodding lunatic, Hawke—of course she'd keep a Tranquil mage around like that."

Hawke frowned at some imagined point upon the wall.  _It doesn't make sense_ , she wanted to say, but she couldn't find the words for what didn't fit.  It didn't help that her brain now associated pieces that didn't fit with unsolved strings of murders that had taken more than Hawke had left to give.  "Sure.  Fine," she said at last.  "Can we get on with your business now?"

"Ugh, _fine_ , dig your own grave for all I care.  It's ancient history, really, but you remember that Hightown house Bartrand barricaded himself in?  I've been trying to sell it."

Hawke quirked an eyebrow.  "I'm sure the market for homes of madmen is booming."

"You'd be surprised, actually," said Varric with a tired smirk.  "I found a minor noble in Rivain who bought the place sight unseen.  Now, you'll never believe what they're telling me: they say the place is haunted."

"Haunted?" Hawke echoed skeptically.  "What kind of haunted?"

"Minor problems." Varric waved his hand dismissively.  "Voices whispering in the walls, apparitions, things...moving, on their own."

"You don't suppose it's some garden-variety demon, do you?"

"I'm hoping it's just some shit Bartrand dredged up in the Deep Roads.  You know, something easy to...smash."

Hawke's frown deepened.  "I'm no expert on hauntings, but...suppose smashing something doesn't make the problem go away?"

"Well," Varric waved his hand vaguely.  "You're a mage.  I'm sure you know something about...weird shit.  I was hoping maybe you could figure something out."

Hawke rubbed at her forehead.  She wondered fleetingly, and not altogether sarcastically, why everything always had to come back to that 'you're a mage' bit.  But the admission felt too real to speak aloud, and so instead, "Very well, then, Master Tethras," she said thinly.  "We'll investigate the haunted mansion.  Again."

"Thanks, Hawke," said Varric, more relief evident in his voice than she imagined he'd hoped to convey.  "I knew you wouldn't let me down."

Silence reigned between them for a time.  Hawke enjoyed a few extended sips from her ale and contemplated the path that had brought her from just trying to corrall her family into a dry place to sleep to hunting down various iterations of herself for a templar's amusement and leading charges into unknown horrors to help out someone who was not quite a friend, but was decidedly closer than anything she had ever known.

After some indeterminate amount of time had passed, Varric spoke again, quietly.  "You think she knows?"

 _You think I don't ask myself that every morning, noon, and night?_ Hawke narrowly avoided snapping.  "I don't know," she said, instead, and shook her head.  "I can't see why she wouldn't say anything if she did."

* * *

Hawke easily convinced Aveline to come along for the ride, but she felt all wrong about asking Fenris.  She hadn't quite gotten up the nerve to apologize for the way she'd treated him a few months back.  Perhaps Anders wasn't her biggest fan, but he still looked after her axe wound, and he hung around with Varric often enough that she imagined he wouldn't mind lending a hand to the haunting allegations.

Just as they were streaming into the Amell estate, however, Bodahn was offering Hawke a single letter, sorted from all the others and deemed important enough not to be in danger of ripping up.

"Shit," Hawke murmured.

"What's the matter?" Aveline stepped out of the foyer, followed by Varric.  Anders lingered by the front door.

"Say, team," Hawke called over her shoulder, "how do you feel about making a pit stop?"

"Where?"

"Oh, you know..." Hawke waved a hand airily, but she had not quite managed to tear her eyes from the page.  "Only my favourite place in all of Kirkwall."


	4. Haunting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeeep thank you for the kind words of support for this nonsense! I'm having a lot of fun writing it and very glad I'm not just amusing myself haha! There are honestly still a few sections of this I'm not completely happy with, but I'm ready to let it go for the moment and move forward at long last!
> 
> I wrote the vast majority of this while I was still without internet, so instead of painstakingly searching for a real song or a song within the lore to suit my purposes, I just wrote one. I do have a melody in my head that I might record for reference one of these days, but think of the sort of marching feel of a traditional work song, or eg. "Frozen Heart" from Frozen as a more contemporary example.
> 
> This fic keeps surprising me tbh like I thought it would be 3 or 4 long chapters total but here we are. Two more chapters of comparable length? Three? Who knows! We're all just stumbling along in this crazy world! Anyway, thanks for sticking with me, and for sharing your thoughts!

**_I'm not calling you a ghost..._ ** _  
...just stop haunting me._

There was something deeply unsettling about being on a boat, be it a ship filled with desperate refugees or a sad little ferry with only four passengers bound for the Gallows.  Hawke wasn't certain whether it was the unsteadiness or the isolation that unnerved her more.  Every time her feet touched solid ground once more, she dearly hoped they'd never have to part with it again.

"I suppose you're free to roam in and out as you please, since you've decided to play Meredith's pet apostate," Anders muttered as they disembarked.

"Louder, I pray," Hawke snapped, and just barely restrained herself from landing an elbow to his ribs.  She doubted she'd ever grow accustomed to the feeling of so many eyes upon her, and wondered how many times in the last few days she had longed for the anonymity of destitution.

Anders held up his hands in sarcastic surrender.  "I'm just wondering how long you think you can keep this up."

"Not very long at all if someone doesn't shut his fat mouth," Hawke replied thinly.

Anders looked like he wished very much to say more, but the mere sight of Templar Hall silenced him.  He had no skill, or perhaps no interest, in dissemblance through his facial expressions, but hadn't grown quite brash enough to run his mouth on the templars' home front. 

The First Enchanter's office was right across the hall from Meredith's.  Hawke couldn't begin to fathom why First Enchanter Orsino had summoned her, especially after what had transpired at the market.  Her first thought was the usual one—that he knew, somehow, what she truly was.  The second was a guess based on prior experience—that he meant to send her on some fool's errand in the hopes of swaying her political sympathies, failing to understand the underlying simplicity of her true motivations—namely, to stay alive.

Whatever the reason, Hawke wasn't certain she could withstand any more scrutiny.  It wasn't bad enough that Meredith seemed to have taken some personal interest in her—now Orsino had to hop on the bandwagon, as well?  Hawke found herself wondering yet again exactly what kind of power these people thought she held.

"Champion," Orsino greeted her, cordial but cautious, as she closed his office door behind her.  "I thank you for coming."

He paused, as though he expected her to say something, but she could think of nothing to offer.  An enjoyable side benefit of ripping up all her mail was that she hadn't known when someone needed her help, so she hadn't felt obligated to offer it.

"You have...publically supported Knight-Commander Meredith," Orsino continued, quietly, "yet I cannot help but to take note of some of your other actions...and," he gestured to Anders, "your other companions.  I wondered if, perhaps, your sympathies might not align with your...image."

"Many of us wonder the same thing," Anders muttered coldly.

Hawke shot him a sidelong glance while she measured her words.  "I bear you no ill will, First Enchanter," she said, carefully.

"I find myself in a difficult position," said the First Enchanter slowly, hands clasped at his waist.  "Meredith...is not entirely wrong.  I know some of my people might be using dangerous means to oppose her."

Hawke's brow furrowed.  "Dangerous means," she echoed.

"Mages are sneaking out of the Circle at night, often disappearing for days at a time," Orsino elaborated.  "It's possible they're simply visiting their families, or enjoying a moment's freedom.  If that's the case, I don't want to bring the ire of the templars down upon them."

"I take it you don't think that's the case," Hawke pressed.

Orsino bowed his head and heaved a heavy sigh.  "I don't know.  There is word of a meeting in Hightown tonight.  I would go, myself, but if Meredith were to discover me, she would use it as evidence of my involvement."

"And if she were to discover me?" Hawke could not help but retort.

"I would not ask you to intervene, unless you find proof of something sinister.  I only ask that you find out the nature of the meeting."  Orsino's face grew somehow more melancholy.  "I want to help my people.  Protect them, if I can.  That's all."

Hawke suddenly wished, rather keenly, and perhaps for the first time in her life, that she were normal like Carver.  Perhaps, if she had nothing to hide, she would be able to summon the bravery to stand up for the First Enchanter and his people.  She didn't think Meredith was unreasonable, just the usual, terrifying, overzealous templar.  Perhaps, if she weren't a mage, Meredith would see her as an equal. 

Perhaps, if she weren't a mage, she would be able to see herself as Meredith's equal.

Hawke heaved a deep sigh, which she made no effort to conceal.  "I think I can manage that," she said at last.

"You have my thanks, Champion," Orsino afforded her a small bow.  There was no mockery in it.

Hawke nodded her silent acknowledgement and turned to depart.  She tried not to think about what she'd agreed to, what she couldn't agree to but wanted to, and instead focused on the heavy wood and iron of the door and its handle, the sonorous thumping of footfalls in the empty halls, the muted murmurs of templars who guarded the gates.

"Playing both sides, huh?" Varric spoke up when they'd made it out into the courtyard, a decided edge to his voice.  "You sure know how to court trouble, Hawke."

Hawke ran a hand through her hair, some mixture of nerves and irritation.  "What was I supposed to say, Varric?" she snapped.  "'Sorry, sad-eyed man, you're on your own?'"

Varric scoffed.  "Better that than trying to pull one over on the—"

"Champion."

"Andraste's _ass_ ," Varric cursed under his breath.

Hawke felt a sudden tightness in her throat as she turned her attention to the voice's owner.  "Knight-Commander," she said, as cordially as she could manage.

Meredith approached, face unreadable as usual, but there was something...unsteady about her gait.  Not quite a limp, more like the way people walked when they were drunk or exhausted and trying to keep their balance.  "I was not expecting you, but...I wonder, do you have a moment?"

Hawke glanced over her shoulder and abruptly wished she hadn't.  Her companions' faces were frozen in various states of shock.

"Of course," said Hawke, affecting a smile.  Then, impulsively, she added, "I was hoping I might catch you, while I was here."

Meredith narrowed her eyes skeptically, but she said nothing.  She indicated with a small tilt of her head the stairs Hawke and her companions had just descended.

Hawke dared one more glance over her shoulder before she followed.  Anders was positively fuming.  She was fairly certain he was beginning to tremble all over—only a matter of time before he started glowing around the eyes.  Aveline watched with crossed arms and raised eyebrows, and Varric with the same dismal resignation she'd last seen in the Deep Roads.

Meredith crossed the threshold into her office and over to her desk.  She leaned heavily upon it and bowed her head, as though in distress.  The sight was most unsettling.  Hawke closed the door behind her, tried to focus on the heavy wood and iron and not on the mounting dread tugging at her insides.

"Is...something the matter?" Hawke tried, awkwardly.

Meredith took in a ragged breath, a sound she could not quite conceal within the confines of the small room.  "Forgive me," she said quietly, then righted herself, but she looked as though she ought to be holding onto something.

"I shall get directly to the point," she continued, sharper.  "There is a conspiracy afoot in the Gallows, and no one seems willing to speak plainly with me on the matter.  I have seen evidence that mages are being permitted to sneak out, disappearing for days at a time, their absences unreported.  I have demanded that Orsino provide more detailed reports, yet he refuses.  Indeed," she narrowed her eyes, "he suggests I am seeing evidence where there is none.  Either he is incompetent, or involved.  Neither is acceptable."

"Why would Orsino refuse?" Hawke wondered, perhaps a bit flatly.  "Isn't it his job to work with you?"

"It is his job to advocate for his charges, as well.  He maintains that my demands are unreasonable," Meredith scoffed.  "A hollow echo these days.  Claiming I'm irrational has become the latest sport, it seems.  But I know what I have seen, and I will not pretend otherwise."  She shook her head.  "And what am I to believe, in the face of the First Enchanter's boldfaced attempts at deception?  How else could these mages convince my oath-sworn men to lie to my face, if not with the use of forbidden magic?"

Hawke felt a terrible churning in her stomach, a visceral reminder of the line she found herself toeing.  "When those mages escaped before, you suggested your men felt sympathy for them.  Couldn't these incidents be the same?"

Meredith narrowed her eyes.  "A momentary lapse is one thing," she replied evenly.  "Repeated infractions are quite another."

"So..." Hawke narrowly resisted the urge to fidget under her steely gaze.  "What is you want from me, exactly?"

"You have seen for yourself the way the Grand Cleric refuses to use her influence to resolve the conflict between the First Enchanter and myself," said Meredith.  "It seems my word and my observation are no longer enough.  Her Grace believes I am motivated by hatred."

 _Aren't you?_ Hawke did not snap.  She took a moment to consider what she wished to say, and indeed, why she felt it worthwhile to speak at all.  Maybe Varric was right—maybe she ought to stick to the path she'd already chosen: swallow her pride, do whatever the Knight-Commander asked, and hope for the best.

But there was something that rang so wrong about the whole situation.  Why was Meredith confiding in her on a matter that ought to be none of her business, really, even as Kirkwall's Champion, whatever that title was supposed to mean?  What kind of influence did Meredith think Hawke commanded?  How could Meredith continually fail to notice or acknowledge Hawke's magic, even after she'd suddenly taken such a personal interest in Hawke's family?  Going to the trouble to learn of her mother, going to the trouble to offer condolences even when Hawke admitted to her father's apostasy and lashed out at her in response, and now, confiding in her like they were equals.  Like they could ever be equal.

On top of that, Meredith seemed distinctly unwell, another fact the both of them refused to acknowledge.  She was unsteady, weak on her feet, not quite as still or stalwart as usual, and there shone in her steely eyes a note of something remarkably akin to desperation.

Hawke spoke slowly, and as gently as she knew how.  "Don't misunderstand me, Knight-Commander; I'm happy to lend you my support, if you feel it's useful, and it's...certainly not my place to question your judgement.  But I do...wonder...at your motivation."

Meredith turned to face her, a threat clear in her eyes.  Hawke held up her hands in surrender.

"I know you don't care for the First Enchanter," she continued quickly, "but he doesn't really strike me as the scheming type.  And..." she braced herself, for all the countless misfortunes that could befall her if this went south "...I know it's not technically allowed, but would it be so bad if the disappearing mages were just...I don't know, visiting their families, or something, and not plotting against you at all?"

To her immense shock, Meredith did not threaten her, did not raise her voice or her hand, did not even continue to glare at her.  On the contrary, Meredith's harsh exterior seemed somehow to crack before Hawke's very eyes, and the desperation that had been but a shadow before now shone plainly upon her striking features.

Meredith lowered her gaze and turned away.  She leaned heavily upon her desk once more.  "We have something in common, Hawke," she said, quietly, voice all but broken.

Hawke swallowed, hard.  "What's that?" she managed.

Meredith took in a soft, shuddering breath.  "The curse of magic runs in my blood, as well."

Hawke felt her blood run cold.  "Oh?"

Meredith stood, slowly, painstakingly.  "My sister was a mage."

"Was?" the word fell from her lips before she could stop it, forced itself into existence even though Hawke knew what the answer would be.

Meredith bowed her head.  "She was a kind, gentle soul.  Fearful.  Completely unprepared for such a burden.  My family hid her.  They...we knew she would not survive in the Circle, or pass their rigourous tests."

"You..." Hawke breathed.  "You broke the law?  You shielded a mage from the templars...?"

"I did, yes," Meredith nodded slowly, eyes gone glassy and distant.  "I was only a child, myself, at the time.  Of course I didn't want my sister to be unhappy."  Her voice grew stern, but the strange, broken quality did not quite fall away.  "But her curse attracted attention.  And when at last the templars came for her, her terror made her easy prey for a demon.  She..."

Meredith faltered, and her hands found her desk again.  "My sister...Amelia...tore our mother apart, right in front of my eyes.  She had slain more than seventy innocents before the templars were able to subdue her."

A voice echoed in Hawke's mind, a memory of a little girl with a gentle heart who'd had terrible nightmares about herself, and she swallowed hard against a lump in her throat that would not subside.

"'Would it be so bad', you say," Meredith shook her head.  "But I have seen the cost of sentimentality."  She approached, and it took everything Hawke had not to back away.  "Even a weak mage, even a mage with the best intentions, still suffers a terrible curse.  I have the utmost sympathy.  But magic comes with a price...one its bearers must not deny."

Hawke stood still, struggled to keep her breathing even as Meredith drew nearer.  Yet, at the same time, how could she deny the way her heart ached for this strange, terrifying woman, who, for all her might, had only Hawke to confide in?

Impulsively, and with a visibly trembling hand, Hawke reached out.  She touched Meredith's forearm, feather-light, but the contact caused Meredith to freeze immediately.

"I'm...so sorry for your loss, Meredith," Hawke said, barely above a whisper.

Meredith's gaze fell to Hawke's hand upon her arm.  Hawke watched Meredith's hand twitch, then rise, and at last, slowly, Meredith placed her own hand atop Hawke's.

Looking up was terrifying.  Seeing Meredith's hand on hers, seeing her own hand on Meredith's arm, was terrifying.  What exactly did Hawke think she was playing at?  What would she see if she looked up into Meredith's eyes now?

If she'd thought Meredith could hold no further surprises for her in the course of one conversation, she'd been sorely mistaken.  When at last Hawke dared to lift her head, there were tears shining in Meredith's steely blue eyes.

"I will not..." Meredith swore, low and harsh and desperate and heartbreaking, "I _cannot_ allow my sister's death to be without purpose."

"I..."  Visions of the kind-hearted little girl, all grown up and with tragic resignation in her eyes, and of their mother, with icy certainty in hers, flashed through Hawke's mind.  "I understand.  Just...tell me what I can do."

Meredith squeezed her hand, lightly, almost gently, little more than the cool pressure of heavy gauntlets against her skin.  "Thank you," she breathed.

* * *

Hawke reappeared nearly half an hour later, sporting the usual haunted look in her eyes that said she'd had an interaction with the Knight-Commander.  At the moment, Varric could not find it within himself to feel sympathy.

"So," he began sharply, "what did your new best friend want?"

Anders looked up in interest, with a similar sharpness to his features.  Aveline frowned and tried not to look at all.  Hawke glanced between them a moment, then to the ferry's captain, who bore the mark of the Tranquil.  She leaned into Varric when she spoke.  "She knows about the meeting Orsino asked me to spy on."

"And she asked you to spy on it, too," Varric guessed drily.

Anders, who had only just calmed down, instantly returned to his previous trembling rage.  "You're not going to help her, are you?" he demanded.

Hawke sighed heavily.  "This isn't how I wanted my day to turn out, either, but what was I supposed to do?  Say, 'with all due respect, Knight-Commander, I do _not_ have a moment to talk, because I'm too busy conspiring with your very public enemy?'  What would have happened then, do you suppose?"

Before Anders acquired the wherewithal to form a complete sentence, Varric cut in.  "I think you know that's not what either of us meant."

Hawke scoffed and ran a hand through her hair.  "Then what?" she snapped, so sharply it should have been frightening.  "What should I have done?"

"It's not that!  I know it's—!" Varric threw up a hand in exasperation.  "What I'm wondering is why you had to throw in that 'oh, I was hoping to catch you' bullshit, on top of it!"

"It threw her off her guard, didn't it?" Hawke countered.  "She didn't even ask what I was doing here in the first place."

Varric felt something cold and terrible clenching in his chest.  He let out a mirthless chuckle and rested his head in his hand.

"Something else you'd like to share, Master Tethras?" Hawke wondered coolly.

"Sometimes I just wonder," said Varric, before he could stop himself, "whether you're really such a good liar, or just lying to yourself."

He'd expected a tirade, or any kind of argument at all, but received none.  Hawke rested her own head in her hands, and said only, "Fuck you, Varric," in a voice all but broken.  Across from them, even an incensed Anders had the good sense not to push her further for the moment.

* * *

The sun had nearly set by the time the ferry deposited them back in Lowtown, and it was getting dark by the time they made it to Bartrand's mansion.  Varric had done a masterful job of avoiding the place since he'd killed his brother inside it, and he wasn't eager to set foot here again.  He'd paid off a handful of people to scrub the blood off the walls before he'd put it on the market, and as far as he knew, only the Rivaini buyer's servants had been left to tend the place, haunted or not.

_...never seen the open sky,  
oh, I've never seen the..._

Varric blinked.  Old dwarven song, stuck in his head, now of all times.  No wonder Hawke thought he was such a shitty crossbowman—his head was always somewhere else when they fought together.

Not that there was anything to shoot at.  The house looked deserted—more so than the last time they'd been here.  No traps, no crazed guards, no signs of life at all.

 _...seen the open sky,_  
nay, the world above won't call me,  
by the paragons, I turn my eye  
to the...

"Do you hear that?"  Too...real.  Not a voice in his head at all, and Varric was sure he'd never known the words.

"No," said Hawke, and the others shook their heads in turn.

 _...world above won't,_  
world above won't,  
world above...

Varric dragged his palm across his face, struggled to shake the tune from his mind.  As they advanced into the next room, the door slammed behind them.

"Shit!" Varric flinched.

"You're twitchy," Hawke needled him lightly, but there was an edge to her voice, or it sounded wrong, somehow, like it didn't quite belong to her, and Varric couldn't stop hearing...

_...never seen the open sky,  
nay, the world above won't—_

"Where's that voice coming from?"  His mother's voice.  That was what it sounded like, layered over others he didn't recognize.  He'd never known all the words, but the cadence was familiar, the way she used to sing when no one was listening, swaying dangerously from too much to drink, longing for things lost to her.

Bartrand must have known it, too, Varric realized—he'd hummed the tune sometimes, idly, and Varric had thought he recognized it, but he'd never really heard it, never really paid attention, and now anyone who could teach him the words was—

"Varric?" Hawke prodded him, and he realized she'd spoken already.  "What voice?"

Varric shook his head and pushed past her into the corridor.  "I can barely hear it, I just..."

But as soon as he'd taken point, he wished he hadn't.  A chair flew past them and smashed into pieces against the wall.  Varric ducked, but he was unsteady on his feet, and when a vase came flying after it, he didn't move in time.

"In about ten seconds, I'm just going to start smashing everything in sight," Aveline remarked coolly, but her words sounded...hollow, like they were coming from far away, and the singing was getting closer, like it was just through this—

Locked.  But that was impossible—the door didn't even have a lock to—

 _...by the paragons I turn my eye_  
to the earth and soil below me,  
earth and soil below me,   
earth and soil and earth and soil and—

"We're getting closer, just...just this way, I can..."

"Varric?"  So far away, but there was a hand on his arm, long-fingered, with a grip that hardly knew its own strength.  He couldn't stop, couldn't heed it, not now, not when the voice was so _close_.

A memory flashed before his eyes, when he'd been a child unable to understand his brother's rage, unable to understand this connection his family had to a place he would never see.  All he knew was Kirkwall.  All he knew was an open sky; never understood how anyone could think they might fall into it.

Something shadowy flashed before Varric's eyes now, in the house where he'd killed his brother, and somewhere in the distance he heard Anders say something like "...no way the Veil could be torn this badly..." and then he heard nothing but music, nothing but banging drums and heavy voices singing as they marched down, down, down into the Deep Roads—

 _Oh, I've never seen the open sky,_  
Nay the world above won't call me—  
By the Paragons, I turn my eye  
To the earth and soil below me!

 _Hey, ho!  And down we go!_  
The veins of life to light our way!  
Hey, ho—!

Varric fell to his knees, vision gone suddenly white and head aching with the force of the music.  He saw the vault in the Deep Roads where they'd picked up that accursed idol, felt it in his hands.  "The idol," he breathed, like a sigh of release.  "The idol is still in the house, Hawke!"

"What?"

Varric scrambled to his feet, struggled to regain his bearings, struggled to see what was in front of him rather than what seemed more immediate.  "It has to be, it's..."  He grasped for Hawke's arm and felt her tense under his touch.  "It's here.  It is, I can...  I can _fee_ l it."

"Okay.  All right, " Hawke shook her arm free.  "We'll have a look around, just...take it easy."

They had just made it to the main hall when they heard someone screaming.

"Is that what you've been hearing, Varric?" Anders asked as they rushed upstairs to investigate.

"No," said Varric.

"Good," Anders muttered.  "Then I'm not going crazy."

If this were a story, Varric would say...he would say...

"Are you real?"

The world...dimmed, somehow, but it also came back into focus at the edges.  A dark-haired woman scrambled to her feet and approached them, hands outstretched.  She touched Hawke's face, and Varric felt his whole body tense, felt his hands begin to tremble.

"Solid," she breathed.  "Oh, you've got to get out of here, before it comes back."

Varric advanced, put himself between the stranger and Hawke.  _No more, not again, not—_   "Where's the idol?" he demanded.

"Idol?" the woman echoed, shaking her head.

"Don't waste my time with your lies!" Varric felt anger rising, felt his head throbbing, with pain and with urgency.  "Tell me where it is!"  He had to find it!  He had to find the voice and find the idol and _understand—_

A hand on his arm, a voice both harsh and reassuring.  "Easy, Varric."

"She's hiding something, Hawke!" Varric's lip curled.

"I don't know anything!  I don't know, only you've got to—"

She staggered, clutched her head and screamed, and Hawke caught her as she fell.  Varric staggered, too, and felt another horrible jolt of pain in his head as the drums thundered outside in the main hall, and the music started up again, a thousand voices or more raised together in song.

_Hey, ho!  And down we go!  
The veins of life to light our way!_

If this were a story, Varric would say...

They rushed out into the main hall.  Charging up the stairs to greet them was what appeared to be an ancient stone golem, the stuff of myth and legend, all bright and red and glowing with a rage too magnificent to be comprehended by mere mortals.  The song seemed to emanate from it, like the thousand voices that sang the old song might be unleashed if only the golem could be felled.

Hawke dove into battle like a reflex, of course, and the others quickly followed suit.  The singing was so _loud_ —louder than the sounds of spells or clashing swords—and suddenly Varric realized that the stone golem _was_ the idol, somehow, or the idol was a part of it.  And as he realized this, he realized that if he could only get a hold of that accursed thing, maybe he could finally get some answers.

Maybe the idol could tell him why a brother turned on his own family for a bit of lousy coin.  Maybe the idol could tell him why a man would sooner see his own brother dead than share his wealth.  Maybe the idol could tell him why a mother sang an old song only when she was half out of her mind and thought no one could hear, why she and Bartrand both had kept Orzammar between them like a treasured secret, one they made abundantly clear that Varric could never even hope to grasp at.

_...by the Paragons, I turn my eye  
to the earth and soil below me..._

Grasp at, grasp at, grasping, solid, burning, bright, lyrium dancing in their eyes, and Varric had dropped his crossbow, because the pain was too much, but he _had it_ , he had it in his hands, not the whole idol but a piece, and _Varric had it_.

Someone was shaking him, hard, cold hands on his shoulders, but everything was so dark, so distant, and bright blue eyes seemed only a figment of his imagination, a vision that haunted him when the one who wielded them would forever elude him, forever pull away, forever look upon a madwoman who loathed her with more fondness than she'd ever held for him, and he couldn't—

"Varric!"

Varric blinked.  The world came back into focus, darker, colder.  The palm of his hand hurt like a bitch, like he'd burned it.

"Andraste's flaming fucking knickers, what kind of fucking cursed fucking demon magic—"

"Hawke?"

"Fucking—" Hawke gestured vaguely to the floor.  Not three paces away lay a shard of the strange, red lyrium they'd seen in the Deep Roads, like it had been carved out of the idol Bartrand had nearly killed them over.

"A piece of the..." Varric breathed, and the world went hazy and bright and red again.  If only he could take it with him, maybe he could figure out why Bartrand had left him to die for it.  Maybe it would teach him the words to the song that remained just barely out of earshot, voices descending into the earth from whence they'd come.

"Leave that thing alone, would you?" Hawke slugged him with the blunt end of her staff.

Varric staggered backward, but he was undeterred.  "You don't _understand_ , Hawke!" he rasped.  She was going to keep him from it, keep him from getting answers, keep him from hearing—  "After everything, after leaving us down there to die, then the coin wasn't even all there was to it!  He sold the statue but he kept this for himself, and now we have it!  We _have_ it!"

"Varric..." Hawke warned, staff still at the ready.

 _Kill her._ The thought was so clear it frightened him.

"You don't understand!" Varric held out his hands, grasping, reaching, faltering. _Kill her, put an arrow through her neck and take what is rightfully yours, if she stands in your way just—_

"Oh, I understand just fine, thanks," Hawke sneered.  "You've gotten a hold of the crazy cursed lyrium and now you're going crazy like Bartrand before you."

"I'm not my brother, Hawke," Varric felt his fists clench at his sides.  _Kill her and end this, kill her and take the idol for yourself!_   "I need this thing!  I need to find out what it did to him.  I need _answers_."

Hawke moved to stand between him and the lyrium shard, staff still at her side.  "Here's your fucking answer, Varric.  The lyrium drove Bartrand out of his mind.  It'll do the exact same thing to you, and then I'll be the one who has to kill you."

"Is this how it's gonna be, Hawke?" Varric shook his head, felt strange laughter bubbling up from somewhere hollow and aching inside his chest.  "You know, I knew you were petty, but this is a new low, even for you.  Standing between me and the only chance I have at closure."  He tried to shove her, but she shoved back, and he wavered on unsteady feet, his knees shaking beneath him.

"Tell me something, Hawke," Varric spat when he'd regained his balance, "did you ever care for me at all?  Have you ever cared for anyone at all, aside from the crazy templar who'd happily murder you if it served her purpose?"

"Enough about that already!" Hawke cried.  "We all get it, you're jealous and paranoid, and for some unfathomable reason you, along with everyone else, from Anders right on up to the blighted First Enchanter, refuse to understand that if I _don't_ play nice with the crazy templar, she _will_ murder me!"

Varric scoffed, and prepared to charge at her again.  "Whatever lets you sleep at night, Hawke."

"Do your worst, Varric," Hawke's lip curled, and she brandished her weapon. "For some impossibly stupid reason, I care enough about you not to let you throw your life away like this!"

"You don't care about me!" Varric snapped, and the force of his rage was dizzying.  "You don't care about anyone!  You feel guilty because your whole family is dead!  I'd just be one more person you felt responsible for—don't pretend it's anything more than that!"

Hawke's face relaxed suddenly, into a vague sort of half-smile, and Varric was sure he saw all the colour drain from her face as she sheathed her staff.  "Fine," she said, low and icy calm.  She stepped aside and kicked the lyrium shard towards him.  "Please let me know in your will whether poetic justice dictates I ought to use Bianca to end your misery.  I doubt you'll be able to tell me yourself."

She turned on her heel and shoved past Anders and Aveline.  Aveline considered him a moment, face stony as ever, and shook her head in the usual mild disapproval before she turned to follow Hawke.  Anders lingered, hesitant.

"What?" Varric challenged.

Anders always looked deeply troubled, but this was something new.  He looked at Varric for an uncomfortably long time before he spoke.  "Think carefully about the last few hours, Varric," he said, slowly.

Varric felt irritation coursing red-hot through his veins.  He reached down and snatched up the lyrium shard.  "I'll be _fine_ , Blondie," he said, as crisply as he could manage, even as he wavered on his feet.  "Why don't you tend to your own problems?  I'm sure you can think of a few."

Anders looked like he wanted very much to say something else, but in the end, he sighed, hung his head, and turned to leave the same way Hawke and Aveline had gone.

 _Alone at last,_ something whispered to him, and Varric felt himself nodding in agreement.

* * *

Hawke stood around the corner from Bartrand's estate, leaning heavily on a stone pillar and trying very hard not to think about anything at all.  She felt Aveline's presence just over her shoulder, and silently thanked whatever benevolent forces there might be in the universe that she and Aveline occasionally seemed to understand one another, at least a little, because she knew Aveline would not say anything.  She was just...there.

Anders joined them not long after, and Hawke forced herself to rejoin the corporeal world, for if there were one thing she could count on in this world, it might be Anders deciding to open his fat mouth at a time like this, just to say something Hawke had no interest in hearing.  "So," she said, with forced lightness, before he could even begin.  "It's been a mixed bag of a day so far.  What say we go spy on some mages?"

Anders frowned, but swallowed whatever it was he'd almost begun.  Aveline clapped Hawke on the shoulder.  Hawke did not have the strength to meet her eyes, but she reached up and patted Aveline's hand awkwardly in a show of thanks.

The not-so-secret meeting wasn't hard to track down.  Even without the tip-off from both Orsino and Meredith, Circle mages who were new to sneaking about had a way of drawing an absurd amount of attention to themselves.  Alas, before Hawke and her companions could even get close enough to hear the words being whispered, someone lingering behind another stone pillar spotted them.

"Hey!"

"It's the Champion!"

"We know you're spying!"  They were already drawing their weapons.

"Wait, wait!" Hawke waved her hands almost frantically, but then an icy spell hit her squarely in the knee.  She winced and fired back on instinct, and then it was entirely too late—the Circle mages were no match for any of them, but they went down fighting nonetheless.

When the last of them had fallen or run away, Hawke very nearly sank to her knees in utter exhaustion, but Anders was already rooting through the pockets of the ones who had first challenged them.  He found a tattered scrap of parchment and held it out for Hawke.

Hawke limped over to take it, then felt the cool release of healing magic in her knee.  She scanned the note and sighed heavily.  "Why do these things always lead to abandoned warehouses?  Sorry, both of you, I know it's late..."

"We're with you, Hawke," said Aveline, and Anders nodded in silent agreement.

And maybe it was just the lack of sleep or the shitstorm with Varric earlier, but somewhere deep within her sad, mangled excuse for a heart, Hawke felt something remarkably near to a twinge of affection.  It was, as such emotions often were, followed by sinking dread.

"I really should grab someone else," she said aloud, but her options were not ideal.  Merrill was all the way across town in the alienage, and rather useless when woken abruptly.  Fenris was extremely nearby and most likely awake, but...

She reread the note while she considered the stakes of going into some creepy warehouse blind and without enough backup.  Sighed again before she motioned for her team to follow her.

Fenris didn't lock his doors.  Hawke had balked at this on more than one occasion, but at the moment, she found it surpassingly useful.  She'd hate to have to knock and wait outside.  Maker knew what else was going on in Hightown at this delightful hour.

"Fenris?" she called into the foyer.  She motioned for Anders and Aveline to wait in the front hall.

Fenris appeared at the top of the stairs a moment later, fully awake and still fully clothed, but without armour.  Some pain numbed over time, or by days, but this one hadn't yet, not even after she thought she'd had her fill of anguish for one day.

"Do you need something?" he asked her evenly.

"Well," Hawke approached the base of the stairs hesitantly.  "Yes."

Fenris nodded.  "Give me a moment to prepare."

"Wait!" Hawke took a few of the stairs.  Fenris waited.  "Can I...help?"

Fenris shrugged.  "If you wish."

 _You could take me back_ , a voice that was not quite Fenris's echoed in the back of Hawke's mind.  She shook her head violently against it as she followed him, and helped him with his armour mostly in silence.

"I've...been meaning to apologize to you," she said, awkwardly, after far too much time had passed.  "For...well, a lot of things.  I wish I knew how to be..." she shook her head, "I don't know.  Kind, or patient." 

She crossed the room to collect Fenris's sword.  She'd always admired it—it was a heavy-hitting two-handed blade nearly the length of his body, the reality of what she'd made her staff to resemble.  "I also wish..." she paused, relished the weight of the sword in her hands "...that I knew how to accept those things when they were offered to me."

Fenris waited stoically as she turned and passed the blade to him, gave a little bow of his head as he accepted it.  "I remember a time when I was in pain, and I took out my anger on you," he said quietly.  "You told me you understood."  He sheathed his sword solemnly.  "As do I."

Seized once more by that strange, flickering warmth, Hawke reached out to take his face in her hands.  She held a moment before she made contact, gave him a chance to draw back, or push her away, but he did not.  She tilted her head up to kiss his forehead, and he allowed it.  "Thank you, Fenris," she said.

"Now," said Fenris, stoic as ever.  "What awaits us at this fine hour of the morning?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Hawke, almost lightly.  "The First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander both asked me to spy on some secret meeting, and we're following their trail to an abandoned warehouse."

Fenris was silent for a moment as he followed her down the stairs.  At last, he said simply, and with surprisingly good humour, "I should expect no less."

* * *

He should find her.  It wasn't too late.  He could find her and apologize, for—

_Answers, answers, if you could only hear the song again you'd find the answers, don't listen to her, don't listen to them, what do you suppose they're doing now?_

Probably going off to turn some innocent mages into the fucking crazy Knight-Commander, and for what?  To buy herself a little more time?  Would serve her right if Meredith turned on her.  Would serve her right if she gave herself away.  Would serve her right if the next time Varric saw the Gallows, which he hoped would be never in his entire life, she was there, too-bright eyes gone dead and glassy, and then she'd—

"That's him!"

"You sure?"

"Shut, up, just let me—"

Varric tried to turn around, but he was unsteady on his feet, and he staggered.  He felt something sharp and cold pierce him as though through the chest, but he looked down and saw no weapon, nor any wound.  The world began to spin, fade, and then...nothingness.

* * *

"No!  No, not her!"

Hawke was so _tired_.  She weighed the odds of using magic to end this quickly, but did her best to stay her mana.  The one who refused to fight her was a templar she was sure she recognized.  The rest were a mixture of templars and mages, a sight you didn't see every day, and the combination made strategy tough to assemble with a weary mind.  Better Hawke should keep her magic a secret, only an extra punch to the blows from her sword that could be attributed to any number of nonmagical items, or to aid from Anders.  She'd only once had her magic dispelled before, and she had no interest in repeating the experience when she already felt dead on her feet.

When the last of them, a particularly crafty Circle mage, fell to Aveline's blade, Hawke turned her attention to the familiar templar.  It had been a long time ago, back in the days when being out of indentured servitude felt much the same as being in it, just one shit job after another.  Beth had just turned herself into the Circle, and Hawke was feeling impossibly alone and directionless when she'd come upon a woman crying by the docks.

The woman had told Hawke that her brother, a templar recruit, had gone missing, and no one would tell her anything.  She'd begged Hawke to go to the Gallows and see if she could learn anything, and Hawke had been too overwrought to refuse.

It had been the usual wild goose chase across Kirkwall and beyond.  Some of the jumpier recruits had confessed they thought the Knight-Commander might be behind the disappearances, Hawke had chased the Knight-Captain out of town into the forest, where she'd learned that apparently even templars weren't immune to the threat of demonic possession, and spent the journey back into the city ruminating on the fact that nothing anyone had ever said about mages mattered in the slightest.

Then, as though in direct opposition to this trail of thought, she'd been sent to the blighted brothel in Hightown to look for answers, and received them in the form of a blood mage who'd been placed there to corrupt the templar recruits.  She'd chased the band of Tevinter supremacists into the sewers of Kirkwall and found this fellow bound by the mages for some sort of summoning ritual.

Funny enough, the reason he wouldn't fight her probably had little to do with saving his life and much to do with what had followed.  As she recalled, without Hawke's good word on his behalf, the Knight-Captain would have thrown him out of the templars, for fear that he would fall victim to possession after what he'd endured.

"I told them not to do it, I swear!" said the man in the present.  "If I'd known it was you, I'd have warned you.  I don't hold with kidnapping."

Hawke felt her stomach twist violently.  "What are you talking about?"

"They said someone was spying," the templar clarified hastily.  "We needed leverage, someone they cared about."

Hawke narrowed her eyes.  "Didn't I once save your ass from a nasty bout of kidnapping?" she wondered pointedly.  "Keran, right?"

"We weren't going to hurt him or anything, I swear!  We just wanted you to leave us alone!"

A mirthless chuckle escaped from somewhere in Hawke's lungs, echoes of a dozen past encounters flashing across her mind's eye.  "Well then you must not know me very well," she said coolly.

"I...I thought you'd understand," Keran shook his head.  "Thrask says Meredith will cause open war with the mages if she stays in power.  We have to take her down."

"So," Hawke dragged a hand across her face, "this whole thing is what?  To oust the Knight-Commander?"

 _I know what I've seen and I will not pretend otherwise_.

"Can't you see she has to go?"

Paranoid, maybe, but damn it all if she wasn't right.

"I'm not here to discuss fucking politics, Keran," she snapped.  "I wasn't here to stop a kidnapping, either, but I suppose my hands are tied, aren't they?" She brandished her blade, a clear threat, and Keran cowered.

"Please, your friend should be fine!" Keran waved his hands frantically.  "Can't you just listen to what I'm saying?  They said you were spying for the Knight-Commander, but she's the problem!  She needs to go, that's what Thrask says.  Without her, we have a chance for peace!"

Hawke felt a nasty headache building behind her eyes.  She squeezed them closed and inhaled deeply.  "Tell me something, Keran, do you want to lecture me, or do you want to walk away from this with your life?"

"I...well..." he sighed.  "They were taking the hostage to the Wounded Coast."

"There's a good man."

"What are you going to do to them?  To...me?" Keran wondered.

A very bitter part of Hawke wanted, with a keenness that was somewhat alarming, to kill him just because she could, just because she was tired and afraid and because she found his groveling pathetic, but she swallowed down the dark impulse.  "I suppose that all depends on how fast you can run," she replied crisply.

"I...I'm really sorry," Keran said in parting, and then made a hasty exit.

* * *

Hawke's throat was so dry it hurt to swallow.  She must be coming down with something.  All this running around at all hours in the bitter cold had finally caught up with her.

Her eyes landed upon Varric before she fully registered what she was up against.  Her stomach twisted so violently she thought she'd be sick.

"I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn't have come here."

"I suppose it was," Hawke heard herself saying as though from far away.  Damn it...what had she said to him last?  I hope you die?  Let me know how to kill you?

"I don't understand you, Serah Hawke," the man who'd first spoken continued.  Hawke was fairly certain from context only that he was the one called Thrask—she barely remembered his face.  "You risk your life to protect mages, you keep apostates as friends, and yet you support Meredith?  Why?  Why, when you have shown me we can stand up to her?"

Hawke hadn't quite managed to look away from where Varric lay, curled up in the sand and bound by some spell she didn't recognize.  She squeezed her eyes closed.  "Meredith," she echoed, shaking her head.  "This isn't about Meredith."

"But it is!" Thrask insisted.  "I have nothing but respect for you, Serah Hawke.  It is Meredith we must see gone!"

Hawke let out a horrible cough of mirthless laughter.  "Respect!" she spat, and set eyes upon the man who must be Thrask at last.  "If you've any respect for me, release my friend, and then we can talk."

Thrask held up his hands.  "We will release him as soon as I have your word to support us."

"What part of I will not negotiate—"

"No!" came another voice.  "The dwarf dies!"

Another familiar face.  A mage they had—

"Grace?" Anders put voice to the thought Hawke had barely processed. "We saved you!"

"We will not kill an innocent to achieve our ends, Grace," said Thrask.  "It gains us nothing to become Meredith."

"Meredith!  What do I care for Meredith?  Kill the hostage!"

No! Hawke barely avoided shrieking.  She clenched her fists at her sides, dug her nails into her palms, reminded herself that she was outnumbered and very, very tired.  Took stock of the situation.  The boy closest to Varric.  She recognized him, too.  He hesitated.

"I...I don't know, Grace," he said. "The Champion helped us when—"

"The Champion," Grace cut him off, "killed the best man I ever met!  Decimus was right—there is no way for a mage to live by the Chantry's laws!  If you're too squeamish, I'll do it myself."

"No!" Thrask thrust himself between her and the boy.  "No one has to die here!"

"That's where you're wrong!"

"Restrain yourself!" Thrask tried to get a hold of Grace, but Hawke knew what came next.  And she was so tired, and her throat was so dry, and what was the last thing she'd said to Varric?

The battle was a blur.  Hawke collapsed to her knees when the last of them fell.  The carnage that lay before her was as nothing to her.  A hollow ache.  The sky was starting to lighten.  Always darkest before the dawn.  She'd been up all night.

"Are you all right, Messere?"  The boy.  What was his name?

"Fine.  Tired."

"I'm so sorry for all of this," he said.  "I swear I've had nothing to do with Grace before today.  I didn't know Thrask was working for her, I didn't know about...about any of this!  It's just, when I saw her, it brought everything back, and I—"

"Right." Hawke held up a hand.  "Sorry, but can we please get this over with?  I didn't come here for a bloodbath."  Hard-pressed to know why she'd ever gone anywhere at all.

The boy hesitated.  Hawke bristled.

"What?" she demanded.

"She...used blood magic, to hold him.  I'm sorry, it's...the only way..."

Hawke felt a terrible shiver course through her at the sight of the knife in the boy's trembling hand, saw a memory she tried desperately to forget flash across her eyes, and felt an old scar begin to _itch_.

Varric took in a horrible, halting gasp, sat up coughing and heaving, but alive, and awake, and when he looked up and met Hawke's eyes, she saw that they were not distant or glassy.  "I take it those weren't Meredith's men?" he wondered lightly.

"Shut up about Meredith, would you?" said Hawke, almost fondly.

"Hawke, about earlier—"

Hawke shook her head, forced herself to her feet and offered him her arm.  "Another time."

"Thanks, Hawke," said Varric, voice tired, presence subdued.  "I owe you one."

Hawke turned away to hide a grimace.  "Just glad you're all right, or whatever," she muttered.

* * *

The sun was already rising by the time Hawke made her way to the ferry.  Normally she'd feel something remarkably akin to panic, going into the Gallows alone, but she wouldn't force her friends to forego any more sleep when they'd already done far too much for one lifetime.  Aside from that, Hawke couldn't currently find it within herself to care what befell her.  The concept of death, this morning, seemed about as welcome as any lesser form of slumber.

The ferry captain today looked to be a templar recruit.  Same baby face and twitchy demeanour Keran still possessed after years in the Order.  He stammered and averted his eyes when he spoke to her, and she felt numb enough to wonder with some amusement how he would treat her if he knew.  She passed some time entertaining the notion of various templars she'd met as wide-eyed recruits and found, with absolutely no surprise, that there was only one she could not picture.

Hawke leaned out of the ferry and dragged her hand idly through the icy water as they neared the looming chains of the Gallows, splashed a bit on her face to keep herself alert, though in all likelihood the only horrors that awaited her this morning were purely interpersonal.

She hadn't the faintest idea what she was meant to tell Orsino.  _Yes, turns out your people were plotting something sinister after all, what next?_   On the other hand, she hadn't the faintest idea what she was meant to tell Meredith.  _Turns out you were right, people are indeed plotting against you, but hey, please show mercy, it's not like they said you were crazy and imagining things?_

Hawke thanked the ferry captain as she disembarked, and made her way to Templar Hall as the bell chimed seven.  She passed a small group of Tranquil mages, walking together in unnatural silence, and held her breath, exhaled only when she spotted no familiar faces among them.

Orsino's door was closed, while the Knight-Commander's was ajar, her office empty.  Hawke entered, hesitantly, and leaned heavily upon Meredith's desk to wait.  She was certain if she sat, she would never stand up again.

"Greetings, Champion of Kirkwall."

Hawke felt her gut wrench in response to the mechanical voice.  "Hi, Elsa," she said, and hung her head lower.

"The Knight-Commander sits vigil in the Chantry every morning," said Elsa.  "She will be here presently."

"Thanks."  Hawke felt a terrible wetness stinging at the corners of her eyes, and struggled to bite it back, but words burned in her throat, and she was too exhausted to keep them in check.  "What's it like, Elsa?  Being Tranquil?"

"I am contented," Elsa responded simply.

"What was it like before?" Hawke wondered.

Elsa was silent for a moment, but when she spoke, her voice sounded exactly the same.  "I remember feeling frightened often, though I do not remember why.  When the time came for my Harrowing, my elders felt I stood little chance of passing their tests.  I remember that being a very difficult time for me, though I do not remember why.  After it was done, the Knight-Commander, who was Knight-Captain at the time, offered me a position as her assistant."

"And working for her?" Hawke could not help but to press further.

"The Knight-Commander sees that my skills are put to good use, and that I am well-cared for," said Elsa.  "I know many Tranquil mages who are not nearly so fortunate."

Something terrible and dark and twisting rose up inside Hawke, and she could not find the strength to fight it.  "Do you know—" she began, but her tongue was mercifully stayed by the sound of heavy boots in the resonant hallways.

"Serah Hawke."

Hawke felt the treacherous tears threatening to spill from her eyes once more, now of all times, and so she did not attempt to right herself.  "Not sure if you're aware," she said, in an attempt at lightness somewhat dampened by the obvious emotion in her voice, "but a lot of people in this city don't like you."

A small huff, though of derision or amusement, Hawke would be hard-pressed to say.  "And?"

Hawke took in a shuddering breath.  "And nothing, I suppose," she clenched her hands into fists.  "You were right.  About the conspiracy, I mean."

She heard Meredith approach, squeezed her eyes closed and struggled to steady her breathing. "I am seldom wrong," said Meredith evenly.  "And Orsino's involvement?"

A sputtering, breathless sort of laughter escaped her.  "None, as far as I can tell."

"Nonsense.  Then who?"  She could feel where Meredith stood, even imagined she could feel Meredith's steely eyes boring into her, yet Meredith's tone remained calm and even, and she did not make any reference to the state Hawke was in.  Jarring, yet strangely refreshing to receive no pity.

Hawke inhaled deeply, shook her head.  "I didn't know most of them.  The templar Keran gave me an earful about how you're crazy and you'll 'provoke open war with the mages' if you stay in power, but he made it abundantly clear he was just parroting Thrask."

"Thrask?" Meredith echoed before she could continue, and there was an immediate change in her voice.  Surprise.  Betrayal.  Sorrow.

"He's dead," said Hawke.  So many dead.  So many bodies littered across the wounded coast, and Anders and Aveline and Fenris following her blindly, and Varric...  "He was leading a band of crazy people, some mages, some templars, out on the Wounded Coast," she continued, and felt herself losing the battle against tears.  "I was up all damned night chasing after them—they kidnapped my friend, they held him with blood magic, they—I'm...sorry—"  She covered her face and stifled the sob that tore through her into a quiet, choking sound.

Of all the fucking stupid places to break down crying, she had to choose the fucking Knight-Commander's office.  The knowledge of her own weakness, her own idiocy, brought on a fresh wave of tears.  Better she'd done it in front of Orsino.  Better she'd done it in front of Varric and taken a lifetime's teasing for worrying about him.  Better she'd done it in front of the whole damned city, for that matter.

She felt Meredith's hand on her shoulder, heavy and grounding, and she found in her current state that she did not fear it, whatever the touch might bring down upon her.  _I remember that being a difficult time for me,_ Elsa had said, _though I do not remember why_.  Hawke wondered what she would have the mercy of forgetting, if she just simply...gave up, and turned herself in.

"I thank you for your assistance, Hawke," said Meredith, almost gently.  "I assure you the matter will be dealt with.  Perhaps you ought to get some rest."

Hawke scrubbed at her face with her sleeve, probably smearing the evening's grime and blood across her skin, but it was a far more familiar sensation than the wetness of tears.  "What is the end goal here, Meredith?" she wondered.  Belatedly she realized she oughtn't to have used the Knight-Commander's name.  Then, still more slowly, she realized Meredith had used hers.

"End goal..." Meredith echoed quietly, but there was something different in her voice suddenly, something that set Hawke's frayed nerves on edge and caused her to meet the Knight-Commander's gaze at long last.

"End goal...the end goal is to...end..."  Meredith's steely grey-blue eyes had gone glassy and distant, her brow furrowed, and she...staggered, unsteady like she'd been before, and like...

A half-formed idea, far too big a leap for Hawke's addled mind to make.  Impulsively, Hawke righted herself.  She took Meredith firmly by the heavily-armoured shoulders, and shook her, the way she'd done to Varric not half a day prior.  It was a bit like trying to shake a stone wall.  "Meredith!"

Meredith flinched away from her as though burned, eyes gone bright and searching once more.  She staggered backward, blinked slowly as she took in her surroundings, as though she had been somewhere else.

"I...forgive me," she said quietly.  "Thank you again, Champion.  You have done a great service for your city."

"Meredith, are you...?  Is everything all right?"

Meredith's gaze turned cold.  "Aside from the conspiracy unfolding beneath my very nose, yes, everything is fine."

"I mean..." Hawke approached, hesitantly, "...with...you."

Meredith narrowed her eyes in a warning, so clearly different from the usual studious expression.  "I do not recall asking for your _pity_ , Champion.  You have seen for yourself that I am not imagining anything, as so many seem determined to convince me."

"That's not what I meant—"

Meredith advanced on her, and Hawke was too tired to suppress the urge to back away.  "Be very careful with your words, _Champion_."

Hawke felt irritation course through her, felt a nasty headache building behind her eyes, and sighed heavily before she gave into the self-destructive apathy that seemed to rule her this morning.  "I didn't mean anything by it, Knight-Commander," she said at last.  "You seemed...tired, that's all.  Perhaps I'm projecting."

Meredith said nothing, and Hawke hadn't the strength to try to gauge the subtleties of her expression before she turned to leave.  Still, some horrible impulse stopped her just shy of the door, fingers curled upon its frame, longing for the self-control or the self-preservation to walk away, to stick to the path she'd chosen for however long it lasted.

"For whatever it's worth, Meredith," she said, before she could stop herself, "I know you're not crazy.  I'm not just saying that.  I've seen real madness."

* * *

 _Think carefully about the last few hours, Varric_.

The singing—his mother's voice, or a thousand ancient dwarves marching downward into the Deep Roads, calling out to him, offering him answers, a glorious battle with a stone golem come to life, and the singing!  The singing had been louder than all of it, and Hawke's eyes searching for his and Hawke's hands shaking him awake had seemed so much less real than—

Not real.  Not real, and he had to find her and apologize before it was too late, but she—

But she was going to keep him from getting answers—answers he needed!  All she cared about was saving her own skin even if it meant living under the sodding Knight-Commander's thumb, and as if that weren't enough, she had to go dragging Varric along for the ride!

Well, no more.  No more, because now Varric had a piece of the idol that was so important his own brother tried to kill him, so important he had to kill his brother—so important Hawke had to make him go through with it because he cared and Hawke didn't, or Hawke cared and he didn't, or—

If this were a story, Varric would say there had been a battle.

Had there?


End file.
